Diabetes Unawareness in Patients Hospitalized Other Than Internal Medicine Services and Related Factors: A Cross-sectional Multidisciplinary Study

Aim: Diabetes, which has turned into a pandemic in the twenty-first century, concerns all branches of medicine. This study aims to investigate the prevalence of diabetes unawareness by checking HbA1c in patients hospitalized in clinics other than internal medicine and evaluate the factors associated with them.

Patients and Methods: The study included 630 patients hospitalized outside internal medicine services at or over the age of 18 whose anthropometric measurements could be made. The sociodemographic properties and comorbidities of the patients were recorded. Their anthropometric measurements, fasting blood glucose and HbA1c measurements were made. Those without a known diabetes diagnosis but with an HbA1c value of ≥6.5% were grouped as diabetes unaware. The differences among known diabetes, diabetes unaware and no diabetes  groups  were examined.

Results: The study was conducted between 01.03.2017 and 31.12.2017. The mean age of the patients was 58.04±18.56, while 54.6% (n=344) were male. The number of the patients with known diabetes was 190 (30.2%), 396 (62.9%) did not have diabetes, and unknown diabetes was detected in 44 (7%). Among the 234 patients with diabetes, 18.8% (n:44) had diabetes unawareness. The rate of those under the age of 45 in the diabetes unaware group (11.4%) was higher than that in the known diabetes group (3.7%) (p<0.01). Again, the rate of the male sex was also higher among the same individuals (68% vs 47.9%, p:0.15). The rate of overweight in the diabetes unaware group (56.8%) was higher than those in the known diabetes (37.9%) and no diabetes (39.1%) groups (respectively, p:0.36, p<0.01). There was no significant difference among the three groups in terms of educational levels. The rate of comorbidity presence was higher in the known diabetics (89.5%) than the diabetes unaware group (75%) (p:0.01). All patients with diabetes were evaluated by logistic regression analysis. The male sex, age<45 years, being overweight and absence of a comorbidity were associated with diabetes unawareness.

Conclusion: Undiagnosed diabetes was detected in 7% of the patients. Among all diabetic patients, 18.8% had diabetes unawareness. Conducting diabetes screening with HbA1c in inpatients and paying special attention to those under 45, males, overweight patients and those without comorbidities may help detect unknown diabetes.

This study was retrospectively registered at the Protocol Registration and Results System (Clinicaltrials.gov PRS)  with the registration number NCT04694326.