ABSTRACT
Diabetes mellitus type 2 constitutes one of the principal public health problems today, representing an important burden on care and involving extremely high economic costs, both direct and indirect. To provide an adequate response from the different public health systems, the St. Vincent Declaration was drawn up containing certain recommendations on the protocol of care and the carrying out of controls of continuous quality improvement, since it is a chronic pathology that requires a proactive health policy, which prevents, and provides early detection of its complications. In the present work we set out the results of the first study carried out in Navarra on the indicators of quality in the care provided to diabetics in Primary Health care, carried out by the Study Group on Diabetes Mellitus in Primary Care (GEDAPSNA). The study was made of an aleatory sample of 496 patients, by means of gathering data about their clinical records for the year 1996. 12 process indicators and 12 indicators of intermediate and final results were used. The results detect some important deficiencies that require early intervention: lack of exploration and management of the lesions that make up so-called diabetic foot; low achievement of results in the control of arterial hypertension in this group of patients; and absence of exploration of the lesions of the fundus of the eye in more than 50% of type 2 diabetics.
