Research Article 
Saad Hallawee*¹, Ali Abdulkarim Talib, Bashar Ali Saeed
Received 12 March 2017, Accepted 15 May 2017, Available online 8 June 2017
Abstract
Diabetes Mellitus is a very common progressive endocrine disease in Iraq (and our society) as part of whole world, and diabetic patients are more likely to have cardiovascular diseases than patients without diabetes. ECG is the most widely used simple noninvasive test for evaluation of cardiovascular risk, so our study was focused to assess the relation between the frequency of ECG changes with the patients glycemic control and their age group. A 600 patients with newly diagnosed diabetes Mellitus were identified from diabetic center in Al Sammawah teaching hospital. All are evaluated for variables; age, gender, glycemic control (HbA1c level) and ECG abnormalities. Then they are divided in two groups those with and others without ECG changes during evaluation of their above variables. The selected patients are 294 female and 309 male with most age distribution affected are 50-59 years 189(32%) followed by 40- 49 years,130(22%)then 60-69 age group119 (20%), 30-39 years 68(11%), >70 years 52 (9%) and <30 years about 37(6%). 327 patients with normal ECG and 273 patients with abnormal ECG, female was predominant by 55%, and ECG abnormality was distributed among low voltage in 110 patients (18 %), bradycardia in 54 patients (9%), with variable percent for the other ECG abnormalities. Diabetic control for most of the patients was poor according to HbA1c level which measured in the first visit and 77% of patients with HbA1c above 8. In conclusion; the age group distribution in Samawah city is comparable to the other population, but with very bad diabetic control which require more effective educational and advance therapeutic approaches to control this propagating challenge. ECG changes seen were predominantly low voltage, then bradycardia which may reflect other association which require more future research..
Keywords: Diabetes Mellitus; ECG; HbA1c