Delayed gastric emptying in diabetes mellitus]

Function of gastric motility was studied in thirty one diabetes mellitus patients by testing gastric emptying time (GET). The test was performed by giving patients food labelled with 99mTc. The results showed that GET in patients with diabetes mellitus was significantly delayed as compared with that in the controls (P less than 0.001). 15 among the 31 diabetic patients had delayed GET, accounting for 48.4%. There was no difference in age, duration of the disease, treatment regimen and microvascular complications between patients with delayed GET and those with normal GET. The only difference was the obviously increased incidence of autonomic nerve dysfunction in the former group of patients (P less than 0.05). We concluded that the incidence of delayed gastric emptying time was higher in diabetic patients with autonomic neuropathy.