Abstract
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) “Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes” includes the ADA’s current clinical practice recommendations and is intended to provide the components of diabetes care, general treatment goals and guidelines, and tools to evaluate quality of care. Members of the ADA Professional Practice Committee, a multidisciplinary expert committee (https://doi.org/10.2337/dc21-SPPC), are responsible for updating the Standards of Care annually, or more frequently as warranted. For a detailed description of ADA standards, statements, and reports, as well as the evidence-grading system for ADA’s clinical practice recommendations, please refer to the Standards of Care Introduction (https://doi.org/10.2337/dc21-SINT). Readers who wish to comment on the Standards of Care are invited to do so at professional.diabetes.org/SOC.
For prevention and management of diabetes complications in children and adolescents, please refer to Section 13 “Children and Adolescents” (https://doi.org/10.2337/dc21-S013).
Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD)—defined as coronary heart disease (CHD), cerebrovascular disease, or peripheral arterial disease presumed to be of atherosclerotic origin—is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality for individuals with diabetes and results in an estimated $37.3 billion in cardiovascular-related spending per year associated with diabetes (1). Common conditions coexisting with type 2 diabetes (e.g., hypertension and dyslipidemia) are clear risk factors for ASCVD, and diabetes itself confers independent risk. Numerous studies have shown the efficacy of controlling individual cardiovascular risk factors in preventing or slowing ASCVD in people with diabetes. Furthermore, large benefits are seen when multiple cardiovascular risk factors are addressed simultaneously. Under the current paradigm of aggressive risk factor modification in patients with diabetes, there is evidence that measures of 10-year coronary heart disease (CHD) risk among U.S. adults with diabetes have improved significantly over the past decade (2) and that ASCVD morbidity and mortality have decreased (3,4).
Heart failure is another major cause of morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular disease. Recent studies have found that rates of incident heart failure hospitalization (adjusted for age and sex) were twofold higher in patients with diabetes compared with those without (5,6). People with diabetes may have heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) or with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF). Hypertension is often a precursor of heart failure of either type, and ASCVD can coexist with either type (7), whereas prior myocardial infarction (MI) is often a major factor in HFrEF. Rates of heart failure hospitalization have been improved in recent trials including patients with type 2 diabetes, most of whom also had ASCVD, with sodium–glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors (8–10).
For prevention and management of both ASCVD and heart failure, cardiovascular risk factors should be systematically assessed at least annually in all patients with diabetes. These risk factors include obesity/overweight, hypertension, dyslipidemia, smoking, a family history of premature coronary disease, chronic kidney disease, and the presence of albuminuria. Modifiable abnormal risk factors should be treated as described in these guidelines. Notably, the majority of evidence supporting interventions to reduce cardiovascular risk in diabetes comes from trials of patients with type 2 diabetes. Few trials have been specifically designed to assess the impact of cardiovascular risk reduction strategies in patients with type 1 diabetes.
Full Article