What Is Diabetes Mellitus?
9. Prognosis
The prognosis of diabetes mellitus is greatly dependent on the control of the disease. When there is poor control, this means that there is a prolonged duration where there is elevated blood glucose. This results in various complications such as retinopathy, neuropathy, and nephropathy.
Various studies have found that those who are intensively treated have been shown to have a significantly lower rate of disease progression. This means that there should be tight glycemic control with a HbA1c level of less than 7%. Based on these studies, not only does this decrease both the risks of microvascular and macrovascular disease, patients managed this way also had a longer life expectancy. In 2015, diabetes was reported to be the 7th leading cause of death in the United States. It is a major cause of blindness, leading contributor to end-stage renal disease, leading cause of nontraumatic lower limb amputations, and increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and pneumonia.
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