Increased heart attack risk highlights the importance of diagnosing and managing diabetes at the point of care
Bayer Diagnostics's range of glycaemic testing systems can help point of care professionals lower the risk of cardiovascular complications.
A recently-published study has highlighted the increased risk of myocardial infarction (heart attack) faced by middle-aged people with diabetes, underlining the vital importance of early diagnosis and effective risk management for the condition.
The findings of the study suggest that diabetic patients in their forties and fifties are at much higher risk of cardiovascular events than their non-diabetic counterparts, and may require aggressive therapy to counter this specific threat.
The study found that a 48 year old diabetic man has a 20% risk of suffering an acute myocardial infarction by the age of 58, while a 54 year old woman with diabetes is at equal risk of suffering a heart attack before retirement age.
In many cases, diabetes is not diagnosed in patients until a complication such as cardiovascular disease has already developed.
This further underlines the desirability of early detection which can now be easily accomplished at the point of care using either random capillary blood glucose testing, urine glucose testing or HbA1c measurement.
Convenient point of care systems for all these tests are available from Bayer Diagnostics (a division of Bayer HealthCare).
While random glucose testing provides a 'snapshot' result, HbA1c provides a history of glucose levels over a period of 8-12 weeks.
Anyone who is tested in the community and whose HbA1c is found to be greater than 7% clearly has diabetes.
Bayer's portable DCA 2000+ analyser is able to detect even the smallest changes in a patient's HbA1c, taking only six minutes to produce a highly accurate result from just 1ul of capillary/venous blood.
It is thus a very convenient tool for screening purposes.
In addition, it can be used routinely in the monitoring of patients known to have diabetes by showing how well their condition is being controlled over time.
The earlier diabetes is diagnosed, the greater the potential effectiveness of risk-reduction strategies to prevent cardiovascular disease.
At the same time, patients are less likely to suffer serious cardiovascular complications when their conditions are well-managed.
Both these factors re-emphasise the value of using point of care testing systems in respect of diabetes, with benefits to patients and the NHS.
