Introduction:

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is considered a situation of high cardiovascular risk. Among diabetic women, the risk for postmenopausal estrogen deficiency is added.

Objective:

To determine the frequency of cardiovascular disease in climacteric stages.

Methods:

A cross-sectional and descriptive study was carried out with 611 middle-aged (40-59 years old) women with type 2 diabetes mellitus and who were admitted consecutively to the Diabetic Care Center in Bayamo city, Granma, from 2010 to 2017. The cases with artificial menopause were not included in the study. The chi-square test was used to verify the relationship that might exist between qualitative variables, while Student's t test was used to compare the average values of the quantitative variables between the groups.

Results:

The frequency of arterial hypertension, hypercholesterolemia and metabolic syndrome was clearly higher among postmenopausal women than among premenopausal women (p = 0.0257, p = 0.0391, and p = 0.0591, respectively). Cardiovascular disease increased significantly with menopause and with the time of occurrence of this event (p = 0.0014). The relationship was more noticeable in the case of ischemic heart disease and peripheral arterial disease (p = 0.0521 and p = 0.0011, respectively).

Conclusions:

In women with type 2 diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease increases significantly with the progression from the perimenopausal stage to the late postmenopausal stage, mainly ischemic heart disease and peripheral arterial disease.

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