Diabetes

In that same issue of the BMJ there is an example of a similar piece of misinformation cited in fact by two separate authors, namely that patients with diabetes and no history of cardiac disease have a risk of cardiovascular (CV) events similar to non-diabetics with previous myocardial infarction. 1,2 This observation from an article published in 1998 (3) continues to be restated even though numerous subsequent articles have pointed out that this equivalence applies only to certain subgroups of diabetics such as those with multiple other risk factors, underlying renal disease, or longstanding diabetes at baseline. Among diabetics in general, the incidence of a CV event is only about 1/2 that of patients with a past infarction. In fact, in diabetics without other risk factors (4) or with normal coronary arteries at baseline (5) the risk of a CV event is not signficantly different from that of the general population.