Cardiovascular disease in diabetes and operative risk.

Among the complications of diabetes, cardiovascular disease is one of the most frequent, severe and invalidating. In the era before the introduction of insulin treatment, the most frequent cause of death in diabetes were acute metabolic and infectious complications; at present, after the introduction of insulin therapy and the consequent major change in the clinical evolution of the disease, the most frequent cause of death is due to cardiovascular complications. From the Framingham study it is possible to observe that in the adult diabetic population, the annual incidence of death from cardiovascular causes is about 17%, both in men and women, as against 8.5% in non diabetic males and 3.6% in non diabetic females. Major clinical forms of cardiovascular disease in diabetics are myocardial ischemia, autonomic neuropathy and cardiomyopathy.