Abstract
Diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease. For a regional cooperation in diagnosis and treatment it is necessary to have information of the clinical data as well as of the life-style background of the patient. We developed a critical pathway for regional cooperation of diabetes mellitus treatment, which would share this kind of information, and applied it to some cases. The top of the format sheet states the control target, action target and drug selections. Inside the time table sheet an evaluation of life-style, the clinical data, content of treatment and instructions are to be filled in. While dietary therapy and exercise are themselves the fundamentals of diabetes mellitus treatment, the patients' actual execution of them is also a goal of the education and instruction. To set and evaluate the clinical outcome of diabetes in the critical pathway includes maintenance of quality of life and reservation of regular life length, information about control of the metabolic state and prevention of complications, as well as life style improvement, action change and a state of mind. These outcomes seem to influence each other. In our study the use of the critical pathway was fairly accepted by patients and the cooperation of the medical staff was satisfactory. For the future we would like to increase the number of applications and to further examine the usefulness of the pathway.
