Type
2 Diabetes Costs 47,000 for Every Patient
Complications
of diabetes cost the health care system about $47,000 per patient
over the course of the person's life.
According
to a new study. In the first five years after diagnosis, 85
percent of the costs are due to macrovascular disease -- problems
with blood circulation resulting from conditions such as high
blood pressure and high cholesterol.
Patients in the
study who were receiving intensive treatment for their diabetes
rather than conventional therapy, however, had reduced costs of
complications over a 10-year period.
Researchers from the
Care Research Institute in Concord, Mass. arrived at these
findings after constructing a simulated model involving 10,000
patients with diabetes. They looked at a wide range of
complications of the disease, including macrovascular disease,
nephropathy, retinopathy, neuropathy and hypoglycemia.
For the study,
researchers assumed all patients had been treated for their
diabetes for five years and had a mean HbA1c (average
blood sugar over three months) of 8.4. Then they looked at how
these patients would progress based on a the typical increase in
HbA1c of .15 percent per year.
Over a lifetime, the
study found problems related to blood circulation would account
for 52 percent of all costs related to complications, followed by
nephropathy (21 percent), neuropathy (17 percent), and retinopathy
(10 percent).
The researchers
write: "As macrovascular disease costs arise early and
represent the major component of lifetime costs, this study
supports the initiatives by the National Diabetes Education
Program to promote awareness of the benefits of optimizing blood
pressure and cholesterol levels as well as blood glucose levels.
Improving control of known risk factors for cardiovascular disease
has an enormous potential for reducing the risk of developing
complications and lowering health care costs associated with those
complications." SOURCE:
Diabetes Care, 2002;25:476-481
DID
YOU KNOW:
Sixty-four
percent of black men are overweight, compared with 65 percent for
Hispanics and 62 percent for whites. Twenty-three percent of black
men are obese, compared with 19 percent for both Hispanics and
whites.
Back /
Next Item
