Abstract

Diabetes is a complex, chronic illness requiring continuous medical care with multifactorial risk-reduction strategies beyond glycemic control. With the increasing of  diabetes prevalence, its affects on diabetic patients is more and more severe. Cardiovascular complications are still the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in diabetic patients. Heart failure mechanisms in diabetes mellitus may link to: associated comorbidities, diabetes accelerates the development of coronary atherosclerosis and diabetic cardiomyopathy. Despite recent advances in the pathogenesis of diabetic cardiomyopathy, there are still no specific recommendations for diagnosis or treatment strategies for patients. The majority of patients are asymptomatic in the early stages, overlapping with other complications of diabetes, and are therefore diagnosed at a late stage, when systolic dysfunction and heart failure are established. Speckle tracking echocardiography can detect left ventricular systolic dysfunction in cardiomyopathies even when the ejection fraction is normal limits. Especialy, longitudinal strain has higher sensitivity than the left ventricular ejection fraction when evaluating left ventricular systolic function. Therefore, using speckle tracking echocardiography for early detection of cardiac function abnormalities in diabetic patients is of great importance in clinical practice.