Abstract
Objective To elucidate the impact of activity restrictions associated with the pandemic on diabetes management.
Materials This study evaluated all patients visiting our facility who were determined to have diabetes during the observation periods. To determine the impacts of the emergency declared on April 7, 2020, we examined 345, 1109, and 752 patients whose hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels were measured in March and April, May, or in June, respectively. Patients were compared to data from other subjects evaluated in 2019 under the same conditions. The 2019 subjects included 469, 1315, and 783 patients whose HbA1c levels were measured in March and April, May, or June, respectively.
Methods Comparison of the HbA1c levels in April, May, and June minus the HbA1c levels in March of both 2019 and 2020 were used to assess the impact of pandemic-related activity restrictions on diabetes management. HbA1c levels greater than 0 were defined as patients who “worsened”, while differences in HbA1c levels ≤0 were defined as patients who conditions were “not worsened”. Comparisons of the deterioration/improvement rates for the HbA1c levels in 2019 and 2020 were then performed.
Results Compared to 2019, the number of patients exhibiting a worsened diabetes management increased from March to April 2020 [122 (26.0%) vs. 137 (39.7%), p<0.01], while the number of patients with worsened diabetes management decreased from March to June 2020 [305 (39.0%) vs. 240 (31.9%), p<0.01].
Conclusions When compared to 2019, there was no sustained increase in patients with worsening diabetes management during the 2020 observation period.
© 2021 The Juntendo Medical Society. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original source is properly credited.
