Nationwide comparison of long-term survival and cardiovascular morbidity after acute aortic aneurysm repair in patients with and without type 2 diabetes

Objective: Epidemiologic data indicate decreased risk for development, growth, and rupture of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) among patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM). We therefore evaluated mortality and cardiovascular morbidity after acute repair of AAA in diabetic and nondiabetic patients. Methods: In this nationwide observational cohort study of patients registered in the Swedish Vascular Registry and the Swedish National Diabetes Register, we compared mortality and morbidity after acute open (n = 1357 [61%]) or endovascular (n = 860 [39%]) repair of ruptured (n = 1469 [66%]) or otherwise symptomatic (n = 748 [34%]) AAAs in 363 patients with and 1854 patients without DM with propensity score-adjusted analysis. Results: Follow-up was 3.91 years for patients with DM and 3.18 years for those without. In propensity-adjusted analysis, diabetic patients showed lower total mortality (relative risk [RR], 0.75; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.59-0.95; P = .016) and cardiovascular mortality (RR, 0.17; 95% CI, 0.06-0.50; P = .01) than those without DM, whereas there were no differences in rates of major adverse cardiovascular events (RR, 1.10; 95% CI, 0.87-1.42; P = .42), acute myocardial infarction (RR, 1.36; 95% CI, 0.70-2.63; P = .37), or stroke (RR, 1.31; 95% CI, 0.84-2.03; P = .23). Conclusions: Patients with type 2 DM had lower rates of both total and cardiovascular mortality after acute AAA repair than those without DM, whereas rates of cardiovascular events, acute myocardial infarction, and stroke did not differ between groups. This might be explained by putative protective effects of DM on the aortic wall.