Abstract
BACKGROUND: Recent European Society of Cardiology (ESC)/European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) guidelines provide recommendations for detecting and treating chronic kidney disease (CKD) in diabetic patients. We compared clinical practice with guidelines to determine areas for improvement. METHODS: German database analysis of 675,628 patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes, with 134,395 included in this analysis. Data were compared with ESC/EASD recommendations. RESULTS: This analysis included 17,649 and 116,747 patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, respectively. The analysis showed that 44.1 and 49.1 % patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, respectively, were annually screened for CKD. Despite anti-diabetic treatment, only 27.2 % patients with type 1 and 43.5 % patients with type 2 achieved a target HbA1c of < 7.0 %. Use of sodium-glucose transport protein 2 inhibitors (1.5 % type 1/8.7 % type 2 diabetes) and glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (0.6 % type 1/5.2 % type 2 diabetes) was limited. Hypertension was controlled according to guidelines in 41.1 and 67.7 % patients aged 18-65 years with type 1 and 2 diabetes, respectively, (62.4 vs. 68.4 % in patients > 65 years). Renin angiotensin aldosterone inhibitors were used in 24.0 and 40.9 % patients with type 1 diabetes (micro- vs. macroalbuminuria) and 39.9 and 47.7 %, respectively, in type 2 diabetes. CONCLUSIONS: Data indicate there is room for improvement in caring for diabetic patients with respect to renal disease diagnosis and treatment. While specific and potentially clinically justified reasons for non-compliance exist, the data may serve well for a critical appraisal of clinical practice decisions.