Self-care of young diabetics in practice.

UNLABELLED

To determine whether young diabetics follow the most important rules of diabetes educational programs as remembering to carry 'soluble sugars' and insulin shots in their daily life, the analysis using 263 simple and anonymous questionnaires was performed. The study involved 183 IDDM children from Kansas-USA (76 boys, 107 girls) and 80 IDDM children from Silesia, Poland (36 boys, 44 girls) of mean age 12.95 +/- 2.65, mean IDDM duration 4.77 +/- 3.15 years, mean HbA1c 8.53 +/- 1.93%. We found: (1) 79.85% of all IDDM children carry something to treat or prevent hypoglycemia, more girls than boys, and more American than Polish ones (p < 0.01). (2) Only 59.92% of IDDM children carry 'soluble sugars' (no statistically significant differences between sexes and nationalities). (3) No correlation between carrying 'sugars' and age, metabolic control, number of glycemia measurements, forgetting insulin injections and kind of insulin therapy. (4) Duration of diabetes was not correlated with carrying 'sugars' whereas it was correlated with carrying 'other food' (p < 0.05). (5) 53.4% of children never forget insulin injections (p < 0.01). (6) Forgetting insulin shots was correlated with IDDM duration in boys group, with increasing level of HbA1c and with smaller number of glycemia measurements in all children groups, with the intensive insulin therapy in girls and Polish groups (p < 0.01 in all cases).

CONCLUSIONS

1). Diabetic children quite often carry nothing or 'non-soluble sugars' with themselves to treat hypoglycemia. 2). Diabetic children more often forget to shoot insulin injections than to 'carry sugars'. 3). Children with a longer duration of diabetes more often forget their insulin injections. 4). Older girls with longer duration of IDDM demonstrating worse metabolic control check their glycemia less frequently and more often forget the insulin injections.