To explore the long-term association of survival benefit from early revascularization with the magnitude of ischemia in patients with diabetes compared with those without diabetes using a large observational cohort of patients undergoing single photon emission computed tomography myocardial perfusion imaging (SPECT-MPI).
Of 41,982 patients who underwent stress and rest SPECT-MPI from 1998 to 2017, 8,328 (19.8%) had diabetes. A propensity score was used to match 8,046 patients with diabetes to 8,046 patients without diabetes. Early revascularization was defined as occurring within 90 days after SPECT-MPI. The percentage of myocardial ischemia was assessed from the magnitude of reversible myocardial perfusion defect on SPECT-MPI.
Over a median 10.3-year follow-up, the annualized mortality rate was higher for the patients with diabetes compared with those without diabetes (4.7 vs. 3.6%; P < 0.001). There were significant interactions between early revascularization and percent myocardial ischemia in patients with and without diabetes (all interaction P values <0.05). After adjusting for confounding variables, survival benefit from early revascularization was observed in patients with diabetes above a threshold of >8.6% ischemia and in patients without diabetes above a threshold of >12.1%. Patients with diabetes receiving insulin had a higher mortality rate (6.2 vs. 4.1%; P < 0.001), but there was no interaction between revascularization and insulin use (interaction P value = 0.405).
Patients with diabetes, especially those on insulin treatment, had higher mortality rate compared with patients without diabetes. Early revascularization was associated with a mortality benefit at a lower ischemic threshold in patients with diabetes compared with those without diabetes.
See accompanying article, p. 2823.
This article contains supplementary material online at https://doi.org/10.2337/figshare.20415606.
K.K. and D.H. equally contributed as co-first authors.
