Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Recently, diabetic mortality is lower than ever before, likely due to dramatic improvements in diabetes care. This study set to analyze changes in the cause of death in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in the past 20 years.

Methods: All subjects were T2DM patients over the age of 30 whose death certificates were issued at six hospitals in the Busan metropolitan area from 2010 to 2014. The patients were excluded if they had been clinically diagnosed with significant tuberculosis, liver, thyroid, renal, connective tissue diseases and cancers, prior to T2DM diagnosis. We classified the cause of death into several groups. The results were compared with our published data on the period from 1990 to 1994 and 2000 to 2004.

Results: The study comprised 680 patients of which 61.7% were male. The average age of death was 66.5 years. The most common cause of death was malignancy (47.7%), followed by renal disease (14.0%), infectious disease (10.6%), cardiovascular disease (8.5%). Compared with previous studies, cancer became the most common cause of death in T2DM patients, while cardiovascular disease and infectious disease significantly decreased in the rank.

Conclusion: Over the 20 years, death by cancer in T2DM patients was is rising steeply. Preventive strategies to promote primary prevention and early detection of malignancy are urgently needed to reduce this excess mortality.