Background and objectives: The adverse effects of systemic hypertension and diabetes mellitus in coronary patients are well known, although their long-term prognostic influence on patients with unstable angina (UA) undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with coronary stenting is uncertain. The aim of this study was to determine the influence of these pathologies in this population at 3-year follow-up.
Patients and method: We studied 279 consecutive patients with UA who underwent coronary stenting. 129 (46.2%) of them had hypertension and 60 (24.7%) had diabetes. Clinical follow-up was obtained in 92.14% after 3 years.
Results: Although the need for new PCI at the target lesion was higher for patients with hypertension and diabetes (12.1 vs 8.4%; p=0.31, and 14.5 vs 8.6%; p=0.16, respectively), the differences were not significant with respect to the control groups. Multivariate analysis showed hypertension (OR=4.71; CI 95%, 1.01-42.2; p=0.04) and ejection fraction (OR=0.95; CI 95%, 0.91-0.99; p=0.03) to be predictors of mortality, and diabetes to be a predictor of myocardial infarction and infarction resulting in death (OR=3.01; CI 95%, 1.13-8.02; p=0.02, and OR=2.68; CI 95%, 1.03-6.95; p=0.04, respectively).
Conclusions: Hypertension was the only independent long-term predictor of mortality in our series of patients with UA who underwent coronary stenting. Diabetes was the only predictor of myocardial infarction or for the combined event of infarction and death. Risk of myocardial infarction was threefold as high in this diabetic patient population, and was the main cause of mortality.