Screening guidelines for coronary heart disease in diabetes: current recommendations.

Diabetes and cardiovascular disease are so intertwined with one another that the presence of one prompts a search for the other. Diabetes has been considered to be equivalent to coronary heart disease (CHD), and conversely many patients with known CHD have concomitant diabetes or its pre-states. This review has been compiled based on the guidelines of the American Diabetes Association, the Third Report of the National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel (NCEP ATP III), the European Society of Cardiology, and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes. A systematic approach was developed by the European Society of Cardiology and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes recently to help detect CHD in patients with diabetes and to detect metabolic diseases in patients with CHD.This article is intended for the clinician in everyday practice focusing on the impact of recent advances in the prevention and management of CHD in diabetic patients and the background behind it.