Type 2 Diabetes and Comorbidity Among Internal Medicine Lebanese Patients: A Case Control Study

Author Info

Salam Zein Akram Echtay Amal Al-Hajje Batoul Diab Dalia Khachman Rita Farah Samar Rachidi Sanaa Awada

Corresponding Author

Sanaa Awada
Clinical and Epidemiological Research Laboratory, Faculty of Pharmacy, Lebanese University, Hadat, Lebanon

A B S T R A C T

Introduction: Comorbidity has been shown to increase length of stay (LOS), and mortality in diabetic patients. However, in Lebanon there is no data that studies the impact of comorbidity on mortality. Our aim was to assess whether comorbid conditions affect LOS and mortality in the sample under study. Study Design and Setting: A case-control retrospective pilot study was undertaken using data of patients admitted to Rafik Hariri University Hospital for six months. Comorbidity information was collected using Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI), and Cumulative Illness Rating Scale (CIRS). Bivariate and multivariate analyses were conducted. Results: We studied 361 patients (33.2% were diabetic). In comparison to non-diabetic patients, diabetic patients had more comorbidity (5.28 vs 4.04; p <0.001), which was assessed by CIRS (p <0.001) and CCI (p <0.001). Non-diabetic patients have three times more risk of mortality than diabetic subjects, but the mean LOS for patients with diabetes was one day longer than patients without diabetes. Conclusion: These results showed that comorbidity increased both mortality and LOS, and it suggested that controlling diabetes and comorbidities may reduce mortality and LOS. However, they need to be confirmed by further investigations in a larger sample.

Article Info

Article Type

Research Article

Publication history

Received: Fri 16, Aug 2019
Accepted: Tue 10, Sep 2019
Published: Fri 20, Sep 2019

Copyright

© 2023 Sanaa Awada. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.JDMC.2019.01.05