Diagnostic Value of Ankle Brachial Index for Myocardial Ischemia in Asymptomatic Diabetic Patients and Comparison with Myocardial Perfusion Imaging

The ankle-brachial index (ABI) as a simple test which can detect peripheral arterial disease (PAD). Therefore in this study we try to evaluate the diagnostic value of ABI for silent myocardial ischemia in diabetic patients and compare the results with myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) results.

All 149 diabetic patients in this study were categorized according to different parameters including sex, smoking, cholesterol, familial history, and high blood pressure, level of ischemia, myocardial infraction (MI), left ventricle (LV) volume, ejection fraction (EF), and wall motion. Then the relationship of ABI index and these parameters were investigated.

According to the calculated ABI the data was investigated based on ABI lower and higher than 0.9 .The frequency of ABI> 0.9 was 16 (11%) and< 0.9 was 133 (89%). There was no significant relationship between all the mentioned parameters and ABI index (P-value: 0.05).

This study suggests the ABI sensitivity and specificity for diagnose of silent ischemia in asymptomatic diabetic patients is very low and in this case ABI cannot replace MPI by any means.