Team effort best way to control diabetes

Patients should lead the way toward management of their diabetes, but they need a better understanding of the disease and its effects, experts say.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. July 3, 2006.

Washington -- As rates of type 2 diabetes reach epidemic proportions, health care professionals are confronting an uncomfortable reality: The management of this condition is leaving a lot to be desired. Now, a group of physicians, educators and behavioral scientists say a team approach is essential if there is to be any hope of stemming an expected onslaught of disease as a result of the growing incidence of poorly controlled blood glucose levels.

Meeting as the Diabetes Roundtable, these experts concluded that it's unrealistic to expect a single physician, under the constraints of a 5- to 10-minute office visit, to successfully manage this complex disease.

Convened by the American Assn. of Clinical Endocrinologists and the American Assn. of Diabetes Educators, with funding from Merck & Co., roundtable members called on the medical community to take a more collaborative approach to caring for people with type 2 diabetes. A briefing was held May 31 to provide specific suggestions.

"There's a tidal wave headed our way, and we're ignoring it," said S. Sethu K. Reddy, MD, chair and program director for Cleveland Clinic's Dept. of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism. Dr. Reddy, a roundtable member, spoke at the briefing.

Nearly 21 million people in the United States, or 7% of the population, have diabetes, and many of them don't even know it, according to a new data analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Often patients and their physicians fall short in controlling blood glucose levels despite everyone's understanding that diabetes is the most common cause of blindness, kidney failure and amputations in adults and a major cause of heart disease and stroke.