Objective: To determine the clinical characteristics of diabetic outpatients and their classification,and to provide some suggestions for diagnostics, education and follow-up of outpatients.
Methods: We analyzed the data of 2 128 outpatients recorded in the past year, and studied the clinical characteristics, distribution of types and relation between glutamate decarboxylase antibody (GADA) and age, sex and duration.
Results: Of all the patients, 918 (43.1%) were new-onset, and 1883 (88.6%) aged 40 or older. Altogether 782(36.7%) of the patients were done with GADA examination and 4.2% of them were GADA positive. Twelve patients were type 1 diabetes and 764 were type 2 diabetes, respectively with 33.3% and 3.8% GADA positive. The prevalence of GADA positive was 5.1% for men and 3.2% for women (P > 0.05). The frequencies of GADA positive in patients with different duration (1 year, 5 years, 10 years and more) were 4.4%, 4.8%, 1.7% and 4.9% (P >0.05) respectively.
Conclusion: The new-onset population of the studied patients is dominated by 40-year olds or older. Type 2 diabetes is the main type in the diabetes spectrum. The frequency of GADA positive is irrelevant to sex and duration.