Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Poor diabetes control is associated with increased risks in all types of hospital admission. Admission into hospital among children and young people with diabetes places a large burden on the NHS resources. For example the cost of a DKA stay per patient is £2064¹.

Introduction: We analysed the paediatric admissions to hospital of those in T1DM. Our objective was to compare our type of hospital admissions to the national paediatric diabetes audit.

Methodology: We retrospectively collected data from a manual review of case notes and read of electronic discharge letters between the period ‘1^st April 2018 – 31^st March 2019’ [n=61] and from the ‘1^st April 2019 – 31^st March 2020’ [n=47].

Results: In 2018-19 the east of England reported 20% of T1DM had DKA at diagnosis. In our hospital 42% [n=16] of our newly diagnosed T1DM had DKA at admission. This trend worsened in 2019-20 with east of England reporting 17.5% of T1DM having DKA at diagnosis, whilst our hospital had 53% [n=10].

Conclusion: The areas covered by our hospital have consistently significantly higher rates of admission of DKA at diagnosis in T1DM compared to the national average.

Discussion: On analysis of the data, GP’s we noted ignorance in 37% [n=14] of cases in 2018-19 of new diagnosis T1DM. This was due to patient’s families home testing, patient becoming too unwell and attending A&E or GP sending patient into a routine clinic as opposed to an urgent clinic. However despite there is clearly a lack of public awareness into the warning signs for diabetes in children. Key symptoms such as polyuria, polydipsia and weight loss should prompt an urgent blood sugar sampling which should prompt admission.Posters such as the 4T’s made by Diabetes UK are already well disseminated however it may also be worth noting that a larger social media presence would be better utilised to target the younger population.

References: ¹K.K Dhatariya et al. Diabet Med 2017 October.