Prostate Cancer Symptoms Tips What is prostate cancer symptoms? We have tips about prostate cancer symptoms

Coronary artery disease is a common and sometimes deadly complication of Type 2 diabetes. People with diabetes have deadly heart attacks at rates 2 to 4 times greater than non-diabetics. People with diabetes are often unable to feel the chest pain that can accompany coronary artery disease (CAD) in non-diabetics, and so the disease can progress insidiously.

Screening for CAD is problematic. Screening usually starts with an electrocardiogram, or EKG. Unless a person is actively having a heart attack, CAD can easily go undetected. Stress tests with X-ray imaging and more invasive testing are expensive and carry some risk.

Doctors can decide to screen for diseased heart arteries or CAD based upon risk factors. Factors that put people at risk include:

• high blood pressure,
• high cholesterol,
• fat in the blood,
• family history of heart disease, and
• smoking.

Men with coronary artery disease can suffer from erectile dysfunction, and investigators at the Center for Applied Clinical Research in Pavia, Italy conducted a study on the possibility of using erectile dysfunction along with other risk factors as a guide to screening for this form of artery problem. Their work was published in the journal Endocrine in August 2011.
Two hundred and ninety-three men with Type 2 diabetes were enrolled in the study.

• seventy-four of them were found to have coronary artery disease...
• erectile dysfunction was found to be more common in men with this problem than in those with normal coronary arteries,
• some men with coronary artery disease had erectile dysfunction without other risk factors. In this group, if erectile dysfunction had been used as a criterion for screening, 27 per cent more men with coronary artery disease would have been found than if the traditional risk factors alone had been used.

It was therefore concluded erectile dysfunction can help to find disease of the coronary arteries if it is used as a criterion for testing.
To prevent CAD, patients need to keep:

• their diabetes under control,
• keep cholesterol within normal limits,
• avoid smoking,
• normalize their weight, and
• take part in physical activity on a daily basis.

Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels should ideally be under 7 per cent and total cholesterol should be under 200. A normal body mass index is between 18.5 and 24.9. Type 2 diabetics need to monitor their blood sugar and weight and have regular testing for their hemoglobin A1c level, cholesterol and blood fats. Male diabetics should tell their doctor if they suffer erectile dysfunction so their doctor can decide whether further testing for coronary artery disease is warranted.