Cause-of-Death Trends for Diabetes Mellitus over 10 Years / 당뇨병

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Recently, diabetic mortality is lower than ever before, likely due to dramatic improvements in diabetes care. This study set to analyze changes in the cause of death in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in the past 10 years. METHODS: All subjects were T2DM patients over the age of 30 whose death certificates were issued at six hospitals in the Busan metropolitan area from 2000 to 2004. The patients were excluded if they had been clinically diagnosed with significant tuberculosis, liver, thyroid, renal, connective tissue diseases and cancers, prior to T2DM diagnosis. We classified the cause of death into several groups by KCD-4. The results were compared with published data on the period from 1990 to 1994. RESULTS: The study comprised 680 patients, of which 374 (55.0%) were male. The average age of death was 66.3 +/- 10.7 years. The most common cause of death was cardiovascular disease (30.6%), followed by infectious disease (25.3%), cancer (21.9%), congestive heart failure (7.1%), renal disease (4.7%), liver disease (2.7%), and T2DM itself (1.9%). In the study from the earlier period, the most common cause of death was also cardiovascular disease (37.6%), followed by infectious disease (24.2%), T2DM (6.0%), liver disease (5.4%), cancer (4.7%), and renal disease (3.3%). CONCLUSION: Over both study periods, the first and second cause of death in T2DM were cardiovascular disease and infectious disease, respectively. However, death by cerebral infarction among cardiovascular disease patients was significantly lower in the latter period, while death by malignancy was markedly increased.