Half of diabetes cases is detected when there are already complications
During the 54th Congress of the Spanish Society of Endocrinology and Nutrition, an update of the large figures related to type 2 diabetes, which affects 13.8 percent of the population over 18 years of age.In 50 percent of cases it is diagnosed when there is already at least one complication associated with bad blood glucose control.
This has been one of the issues addressed by Martín López de la Torre, specialist at the Virgen de las Nieves Hospital, in Granada, and coordinator of the Diabetes Working Group of the Spanish Society of Endocrinology and Nutrition (SEEN), in the 54th Congressof society, held in Oviedo.
More than a third of the patients have some degree of renal affectation and a good part of them require substitute renal treatment
The complications that begin before the diagnosis seriously alter the patient's quality of life and suppose a high sanitary cost.
In the case of type 2 diabetes, López de la Torre has highlighted, in addition to its frequency and infradiagnosis, its association to other pathologies."Thus, it happens with obesity in more than half of the patients and with hypertension in more than 80 percent," he said.
Retinopathy
Type 1 diabetes is much less frequent and complications take longer to appear."However, when they manifest, patients are still young individuals. It is also necessary to take into account the anxiety that usually generates in childhood and, above all, in adolescence," added the endocrinologist.
The cost of therapy increases significantly when it already has micro and macrovascular complications, exceeding 2,000 euros per year
López de la Torre has insisted that the best time to avoid complications associated with diabetes is "when they have not yet developed; when renal, ocular, neuropathic or vascular complication occurs, much of the damage is already irreversible".Thus, diabetic retinopathy is the most frequent complication of diabetic and the first cause of blindness in the western world;In addition, more than a third of the diabetics have a renal affectation of some degree and more of the fifth that initiate substitute renal treatment are diabetic.
United to this, the cost of the treatment of a diabetic patient increases significantly when it already has micro and macrovascular complications, exceeding 2,000 euros a year.
Therefore, the priority objectives in the approach to diabetes must be, in the words of the endocrinologist of the Granada hospital, "their prevention, early diagnosis, early and proactive treatment and, if all this is not enough, address complications, with an involvementmultidisciplinary and application of coordinated action protocols and agreed by the different scientific societies. "