Background and Objective: Cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy (CAN) is the most common and
important type of diabetic autonomic neuropathy. Silent myocardial infarction, respiratory failure and
increased mortality are the outcomes of CAN. This study was carried out to screen the cardiovascular
autonomic neuropathy in non- insulin dependent diabetics patients.
Method: This descriptive - analytic study was carried on 70 (22 males, 48 females) non- insulin
dependent diabetics’ patients. Resting heart rate, heart rate variability, orthostatic changes in heart rate,
blood pressure and corrected QT interval were recorded for each subject. The final findings were
categorized as follow: 0=normal, 1=borderline and 2=CAN positive.
Results: 10 (14.3%) of patients were normal, 35 (50%) of patients were borderline and 25 (35.7%) of
patients were considered cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy positive. There was significant differences
between duration of diabetes and three CAN scores (P<0.05). The systolic blood pressure alterations
showed the maximum correlation with CAN scores (r=0.509).
Conclusion: In our study, the rate of cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy was higher than other reports.
The most important risk factor for cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy was more than 10 years history
of diabetes mellitus.
Keywords: Diabetes mellitus, Cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy, Hypertensio
