Abstract:

 Objective   To assess the correlation between ankle-brachial index (ABI) and 1-year all-cause and cardiovascular mortalities in patients with high cardiovascular risk. Methods   3179 patients with high cardiovascular risk were selected. The ABI indexes at resting state were detected, and ABI<0.9 was regarded as low ABI. The patients were divided into four groups: coronary atherosclerotic heart disease (CHD) group, ischemic stroke (IS) group, diabetes mellitus (DM) group and very high risk (VHR) group. Then the patients were followed up for 1 to 1.5 years, and the correlations between ABI and 1-year all-cause and cardiovascular mortalities were assessed. Results   The incidence of low ABI was 28.2%. The all-cause and cardiovascular mortalities (14.2%, 6.6%) in patients with low ABI were obviously higher than those in patients with normal ABI (6.5%, 2.5%) (P<0.01). In each group, the all-cause and cardiovascular mortalities in patients with low ABI were obviously higher than those in patients with normal ABI(P<0.01). The all-cause and cardiovascular mortality risks in DM group were higher than those in the other three groups. Conclusion   ABI is an independent predictor of mortality, and patients with low ABI have a substantial increase in the risk of all-cause and cardiovascular death.

Key words: Ankle-brachial index; High-risk group； Cardiovascular diseases; Mortality rate