Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Diabetic nephropathy affects 20–40% diabetics. It is the most common cause of ESRD in Europe. In Serbia, 10–18% of the patients requiring HD are diabetics and that number is constantly increasing.

Methods: We made a retrospective study of the survival of both diabetic and non-diabetic patients requiring HD treatment during two 5 years long periods.

Results: During the first period 92 patients were followed-up and during the second 93 patients. There was not any statistically significant age difference between diabetics and non-diabetics with HD therapy, and between disease duration before HD therapy among diabetics type 1 vs type 2, in none of the analysed periods. During the first period survival of diabetics on HD was shorter at a highly statistically significant level compared to non-diabetics 2.3±2.6 years for DM compared to 4.7±3.9 years for non-DM, but it was not statistically significant when we compared patients with type 1 and type 2 DM. During the second period survival of patients with HD therapy was highly statistically shorter for diabetics vs non-DM 1.4±1.5 vs 4.1±2.7 years, and for DM type 2 compared to type 1 DM 0.9±0.4 vs 2.8±2.3 years. Between 1991 and 1995, 19 diabetics – 21% started HD therapy, between 1996 and 2000, 14 diabetics – 15% and between 2001 and 2005, 28 diabetics – 22% started HD therapy. That increase is especially significant in 2005, 12 out of 21–57%.

Conclusion: Prognosis for ESRD patients caused by diabetic nephropathy is extremely bad. That is why all preventive measures should be taken, not only regarding the basic disease, DM, but also in terms of primary and secondary prevention of diabetic nephropathy.