Undiagnosed diabetes common in heart patients

Diabetes often goes unrecognized and therefore untreated in people who suffer a heart attack or have severe coronary heart disease.The researchers from the University of Missouri, Kansas City, USA found that the majority of patients seen in emergency rooms with a heart attack or heart-related chest pain have impaired glucose metabolism. They evaluated 1,199 heart patients who were seen at two hospitals in Kansas City, Missouri. Fifty-seven percent had abnormal glucose levels. Of these, 321 (27 percent) had known diabetes. Among the remaining 878 patients, 126 (14 percent) had recent-onset diabetes, based on their fasting blood glucose level. However, only 35 percent of the patients with newly detected diabetes were actually told about their condition and treated for diabetes. The remaining 65 percent were left undiagnosed and, hence, untreated on discharge. Importantly, the researchers found a substantial number of patients who had high fasting plasma glucose levels, a pre-diabetes sign, but none of these patients received such a diagnosis.One way to catch some of these undiagnosed patients is to use a simple blood glucose test to screen people who go to the hospital because of a heart attack or severe chest pain.