Diabetes Melllitus Case Study

Diabetes mellitus being one of the most common uncommunicable diseases worldwide, it was estimated to affect about 382 million people in the world in 2013, and expected to increase to 592 million by 2035 (English, Milosevich & John, 2014). Diabetes is the seventh major cause of death and disability in the United States (Copstead & Banastik, 2013). According to Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, about seven million people with diabetes that are undiagnosed. Given to this reason, it is very important for this disease to be diagnosed appropriately with quality diagnostic tools in order to have a clear focus on the disease control and be able to educate patients on how they can manage the condition.

Diabetes is described as a group of

This occurs due to the pancreatic beta cell damage by the body’s immune system, which is the only cells that produce insulin that regulate blood glucose. Patients with type 1 diabetes are usually placed on insulin therapy for life. Type 2 diabetes, this is the common type that occurs mainly in adults due to body’s inability to manufacture the needed insulin and the failure of the cells to use the insulin appropriately in the body. The type 2 diabetes needs to diagnose and control on time to prevent damage of the body systems. (ADA, 2010). Gestational diabetes is due to a glucose intolerance in the body, this is only diagnosed during pregnancy. It occurs mainly in women with obesity and those that has history of diabetes in their family (CDC, 2013). Other types of diabetes rate 1% to 5% of all cases of diabetes. These is as a result of genetic conditions, surgery, medications, infections, pancreatic diseases and other illnesses (CDC,

A1C have many advantages compared to glucose testing. A1C test can be done any time and it does not require patients to fast before the test, and avoid day to day variation in glucose levels, thereby making A1C the preferred diagnostic test (English, Milosevich & John, 2014). Study conducted by Mustafa et al on the potential effect of using A1C as a preferred diagnostic tool for detecting diabetes. They stated that main aim of A1C was to make diabetes diagnosis easy hence reducing the burden of undiagnosed disease. The study was aimed to identify the impact of the use A1C as a best tool to diagnose type 2 diabetes. They analysed the Leicester Ethnic Atherosclerosis and Diabetes Risk cohort of individuals that previously undiagnosed with diabetes aged between 40 and 75 who had an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) repeated when within diabetic range and A1C result (Mostafa et al, 2010). They also measured the incidence and phenotype of individuals with type 2 diabetes focusing on A1C greater or equal to 6.5% using WHO 1999 criteria. Through this study, they detected 291 out of 8696 people with diabetes from using OGTT