Abstract:

Background: Diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease characterized by chronic hyperglycemia which requires lifelong treatment. It is a steadily growing global epidemic. The World Health Organization predicted that the number of people living with this disease. Would reach 221 million by 2010 and will further increase by 2025 with majority of cases occurring is Asia and Africa [1]. By 2011 the prevalence in Africa ranged between 1% and 20% [3]. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, the number of people with diabetes is projected to increase from 7 million in 2000 to 18 million in 2030, a regional increase of 16% [1].

Methods: A retrospective hospital based study was done in 269 patients files. All data was collected using the data collection sheets from MTUHA books at BMC Diabetic Unit and Medical files at medical record. Data entry and analysis was done using an Epi data version 3.1 and SPSS version 17.0 respectively.

Results: A total of 269 patients files of diabetes mellitus patients who were admitted for the year 2011 were reviewed and during this time period a total of 275 cases were admitted. Among all patients, 178 (66.2%) patients had chronic complications while 91 (33.4%) had no chronic complications. The most common chronic complications was diabetic foot, nephropathy, stroke, neuropathy and retinopathy with the prevalence of 16.4%, 11.5%, 10.0%, 8.6% and 7.4% respectively. Majority of diabetic patients in this study, around 80.7% had type II DM while 19.3% had type I DM with the mean duration ± standard deviation of 3.23 ± 1.31 years. Of all patients, 18 (6.7%) patients died, where by thirteen patients (4.8%) was due to chronic complications of DM and five patients (1.5%) was due to other co-morbidities apart from chronic complications of DM.


Conclusion: The prevalence of chronic complications of DM among diabetic patients admitted at BMC is higher (66.2%) which corresponds with other studies done around the region [1]. Risk factors like hypertension, poor glycemic control, and longer duration of DM, has contributed much to higher prevalence of chronic complications of DM among diabetic patients. Also mortality rate due to chronic complications of DM is also high so there is a need to increase education and awareness to diabetic patients and society at large about prevention of chronic complications of DM by medical personnel is a critical issue to put into consideration.