A US survey made public by the country’s Secretary of Health, Tommy Thompson, accompanied by members of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Diabetes Association (ADA), reveals that only a third of diabetic Americans know that They present an increased cardiovascular risk.
Based on this data, experts stressed the need for the general population and diabetics in particular to be more aware of the cardiovascular risk of the disease.
More than 2,000 individuals with diabetes responded to the slope. 68% of them stated that they did not consider cardiovascular disease to be a serious complication of their disease. On this point, Christopher Saudek, president of the ADA, highlighted that two-thirds of the deaths of diabetic people are due to cardiovascular disease.
Awareness of cardiovascular risk is lower in elderly people and in people of Hispanic origin. 60% of those surveyed responded that they did not believe they were at risk of hypertension or hypercholesterolemia, another fact about which Saudek highlighted that 60% of diabetics have hypertension and that almost all have abnormalities in lipid values.
Both Tommy Thompson and representatives of the ACC and the ADA expressed alarm at the results of the survey. The incidence of type 2 diabetes is increasing in the United States and this means that cardiovascular complications will also increase, especially if diabetics are not aware of their increased risk.
