The perceived pain of myocardial infarction in patients with and without type 2 diabetes mellitus

Background and Objective: Diabetes mellitus is an important risk factor for heart diseases. Cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy as a diabetes mellitus complication can impair recognition of myocardial ischemia or infarction. This study aimed to compare the quality of perceived myocardial infarction (MI) pain in patients with or without type 2diabetes mellitus. Materials and Method: In this analytic cross-sectional study, 180 patients with or without type 2diabetes mellitus with acute myocardial infarction were included. They were selected from 3 hospitals of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Iran, in 2011 by non-randomized convenience sampling. We used researcher-made forms for selecting the samples, recording demographic variables, history and present disease such as pain characteristics, the electrocardiogram and laboratory results, and also standard visual numeric scale (Mc-Melzac questionnaire) for assessing the presence and intensity and location of pain. Data were analyzed usingindependent t, chi-squared, and Mann-Whitney tests in SPSS17 software. Results: 76.4% of subjects were men, 50.6% were with and 49.4% without type 2 diabetes mellitus. Although the mean of intensity of pain of myocardial infarction in patients with diabetes was lower than those without it, but these differences were not statistically significant. There was no statistically difference between the two groups in type, location, radiation, duration and type of myocardial infarction. There was no relationship between the perceived pain intensity and duration of diabetes or history of myocardial infarction. Conclusion: The results of this study on the characteristics of the location of infarction and its severity and duration and pain location and its distribution showed no difference between the patients with a 5-years history and without type 2 diabetes mellitus. Due to the constraints of this cross-sectional and importance of pain in diagnosis of myocardial infarction, more studies with more control and patients with history of type 2 diabetes longer than 5 years is recomended.