Endocrine Abstracts

Backgrounds and aims: Knowing about patient’s quality of life (QoL) is becoming increasingly important in delivering diabetes care and education. The purpose of our study was to estimate if the diabetes education improves patient QoL and reduces HbA1c levels.

Material and methods: The study sample included diabetic patients who attended a 5-day educational sessions at the Service of Endocrinology in Tirana/Albania. Patients were evaluated regarding their QoL at baseline and 6 or 12 months after their hospitalization. The HbA1c was measured at baseline, 6 and 12 months later. The diabetes QoL (DQoL) measure was used to assess the subjective QoL. DQoL is a validated 46 items survey covering four areas of interest: satisfaction and impact of treatment, worry about the future effects of diabetes and worry about social issues, as well a single question about the general health. A satisfactory level is accepted as a transformed score >60.

Results: The group consisted of 395 patients, 139 males (35%) and 256 females, 97 (24.5%) type 1 diabetes, mean age 44.2±4.7 years, diabetes duration 11.4±5.4 years, treated with insulin in 45% of cases, with baseline HbA1c 9.1±1.67%, having decreased respectively 8.5±1.1% at 6 months (P<0.05) and 8.02±1.23% at 12 months after hospitalization (P<0.001). DQoL at baseline was 56±4.5, 68.2±5.7 at 6 months later and 75.1±3.5 at 12 months interval (P<0.05). The satisfaction with treatment and worry about the future were the most improved scores at 6 and 12 months after.

Conclusions: The education for self-management of the disease improves patients’ QoL as well their metabolic control.