Objective: We study the influence of diabetes in the incidence of infectious diseases attended in an emergency department (ED).
Patients and methods: 2,500 adult patients attended in the ED of a general hospital were examined. We value prospectively: clinical data, diagnosis in ED and rate of admissions, comparing two groups: Group A (175 diabetic patients), Group B (350 non diabetic control patients, with the same age and sex). We used the glycated Hb and the glucose levels to make a difference in A Group: patients with good control (A1 = Hb A1c < 8), patients with poor control (A2 = HbA1c > 8), patients with low glucose levels (A3 = glucose < 200 mg/dl) and high glucose levels (A4 = glucose > 200 mg/dl).
Results: Infectious disease are more frequent in diabetic patients than no diabetic (Group A = 13.1% vs Group B = 3.2%), certain amount pneumonia and urinary tract infection. Also the infectious diseases are more frequent in diabetic patients with high glucose levels (Group A4) than diabetic patients with low glucose levels (Group A3), but there were no significant differences between A1 and A2 groups.
Conclusions: The presence of diabetes was bound up with a higher frequency of infectious diseases, above all pneumonia and urinary tract infection, in an ED. The importance of metabolic control in relation with infectious diseases is not definite in our study.