To Assess the Effect of Dsme on Hba1c Levels in Diabetic Patients

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a chronic metabolic disease with debilitating complications. Diabetic Patients should follow self-care activities like healthy diet, physical activity, self-monitoring of blood glucose, treatment compliance in order to achieve good glycaemic control, control the progression of the disease, reduce complications, and quality of life improvement. We aimed to assess the effect of diabetes self-management education program on HbA1c levels in patients with diabetes.

The present study was conducted at a tertiary care centre in central Rajasthan after written consent. Adults with 18 years and above age with Diabetes were included. Patients who refused to give consent, critically ill patients, pregnant females, patients with severe cognitive impairment and whose HbA1c targets were achieved were excluded. It was an open label randomised control study. Simple randomization was done. Cases were then provided with Diabetes self-management education (DSME). The information was provided in local language. One twenty patients were studied during the period from 01/12/2020 to 1/12/2021. All patients underwent complete history taking, physical examination, routine laboratory examination and HbA1c levels. After providing the cases with DSME, all patients were followed up at 6 months. HbA1c level was measured again at 6 months. Pre and post test data of both control and intervention arm were collected. Data was analysed using Statistical package for social science (SPSS) software ver. 2021 and student t test and chi square tests were applied.

The mean age of participants was 49.07 years, male patients represented 57.5%. About two-thirds were from urban areas. 59.16% were diabetics for 5-10 years. After the DSME program, there was a statistically significant decrease in HbA1c level in intervention group compared to controls (p value<0.05). 56% used oral hypoglycaemic agents, 24% used insulin and 20% used combination therapy of oral hypoglycaemic agents and insulin. Hypertension was the most common co-morbidity followed by dyslipidaemia among patients. There was no significant difference in age, gender and duration of diabetes between the two groups.

DSME plays a significant role in enabling patients to undertake self-management activities to combat their diabetes-related complications and potential premature deaths.

DSME may prevent the onset and the progression of diabetic complications. It is important and promising to raise the self-management capacity of Type 2 Diabetes mellitus patients in low-resource settings.