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Background: Diabetes mellitus is a chronic and very common condition, and there has been lately a considerable increase in its prevalence and incidence. Diabetic patients have increased cardiovascular mortality, in which malignant ventricular arrhythmias seem to be implicated.

Objective: To study the effects of diabetes on ventricular repolarization parameters responsible for an increased susceptibility to malignant ventricular arrhythmias and/or sudden death.

Methods: We selected a group of 110 diabetic patients and a group of 110 controls with the same distribution of age, gender and race. We evaluated the following parameters of ventricular repolarization: QTmax, QTmean, QTmin, QTcmax, QTcmean, QTcmin, QT and QTc dispersions, Tpeak-Tend and jTpeak-jTend intervals (DII, V2 and V5), Tpeak-Tend and jTpeak-jTend dispersions. The electrocardiograms (ECG) were performed by the same operator and reviewed by the same observers. QT intervals were corrected according to Bazzet’s formula.

Results: We found significantly higher values of QTcmax (p< 0.001), QTcmean (p< 0.001), QT dispersion (p< 0.001), QTc dispersion (p< 0.001), Tpeak-Tend dispersion (p< 0.001), and jTpeak-jTend dispersion (p< 0.001) in diabetic patients than in controls. In diabetic patients, we observed prolonged values of QTc interval (5.5%), QT dispersion (0.9%), QTc dispersion (0%), Tpeak-Tend interval (7.3%), jTpeak-jTend interval (6.4%), Tpeak-Tend dispersion (16.4%), and jTpeak-jTend dispersion (12.7%). In the controls there were no prolonged values of any of the parameters.

Conclusion: We concluded that diabetes causes prolongation and spatial …