Short and long-term prognosis of admission hyperglycemia in patients with and without diabetes after acute myocardial infarction: a retrospective cohort study

OBJECTIVE: Admission hyperglycemia is associated with poor prognosis in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI), but the effects of baseline diabetes status on this association remain elusive. We aim to investigate the impact of admission hyperglycemia on short and long-term outcomes in diabetic and non-diabetic AMI patients. METHODS: In this retrospective cohort study, 3330 patients with regard to first-time AMI between July 2012 and July 2020 were identified. Participants were divided into two groups according to diabetes status (1060 diabetic patients and 2270 non-diabetic patients). Thereafter, they were divided into four groups according to diabetes status-specific cutoff values of fasting blood glucose (FBG) identified by restricted cubic spline. Short-term outcomes included in-hospital death and cardiac complications. Long-term outcomes were all-cause mortality and major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE). Inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) was conducted to adjust for baseline differences among the groups, followed by a weighted Cox proportional hazards regression analysis to calculate hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals for all-cause mortality associated with each FBG category. Subgroup analysis and sensitivity analysis were performed to test the robustness of our findings. RESULTS: During a median follow-up of 3.2 years, 837 patients died. There was a significant interaction between diabetes status and FBG levels for all-cause mortality during long-term follow-up (p-interaction < 0.001). Moreover, restricted cubic spline curves for the association between FBG and all-cause mortality followed a J shape in patients with diabetes and a non-linear in patients without diabetes. Kaplan–Meier analysis demonstrated greater survival in non-hyperglycemia patients compared to hyperglycemia patients for both diabetic and non-diabetic patients groups. Survival of hyperglycemia patients without diabetes greater than in hyperglycemia patients with diabetes. In the weighted Multivariable cox analysis, admission hyperglycemia predicted higher short and long-term mortality. Subgroup analysis and sensitivity analysis showed the robustness of the results. CONCLUSIONS: The inflection points of FBG level for poor prognosis were 5.60 mmol/L for patients without diabetes and 10.60 mmol/L for patients with diabetes. Admission hyperglycemia was identified as an independent predictor of worse short and long-term outcomes in AMI patients, with or without diabetes. These findings should be explored further. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12933-022-01550-4.