Published in:
Open Access
01-12-2018 | Original investigation
Antidiabetic treatment patterns and specialty care utilization among patients with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease
Authors:
Kevin M. Pantalone, Anita D. Misra-Hebert, Todd M. Hobbs, Xinge Ji, Sheldon X. Kong, Alex Milinovich, Wayne Weng, Janine Bauman, Rahul Ganguly, Bartolome Burguera, Michael W. Kattan, Robert S. Zimmerman
Published in:
Cardiovascular Diabetology
|
Issue 1/2018
Login to get access
Abstract
Background
To evaluate real-world patient characteristics, medication use, and health care utilization patterns in patients with type 2 diabetes with established cardiovascular disease (CVD).
Methods
Cross-sectional analysis of patients with type 2 diabetes seen at Cleveland Clinic from 2005 to 2016, divided into two cohorts: with-CVD and without-CVD. Patient demographics and antidiabetic medications were recorded in December 2016; department encounters included all visits from 1/1/2016 to 12/31/2016. Comorbidity burden was assessed by the diabetes complications severity index (DCSI) score.
Results
Of 95,569 patients with type 2 diabetes, 40,910 (42.8%) were identified as having established CVD. Patients with CVD vs. those without were older (median age 69.1 vs. 58.2 years), predominantly male (53.8% vs. 42.6%), and more likely to have Medicare insurance (69.4% vs. 35.3%). The with-CVD cohort had a higher proportion of patients with a DCSI score ≥ 3 than the without-CVD cohort (65.0% vs. 10.3%). Utilization rates of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists and sodium–glucose co-transporter-2 inhibitors were low in both with-CVD (4.1 and 2.5%) and without-CVD cohorts (5.4 and 4.1%), respectively. The majority of patient visits (75%) were seen by a primary care provider. During the 1-year observation period, 81.9 and 62.0% of patients with type 2 diabetes and CVD were not seen by endocrinology or cardiology, respectively.
Conclusions
These data indicated underutilization of specialists and antidiabetic medications reported to confer CV benefit in patients with type 2 diabetes and CVD. The impact of recently updated guidelines and cardiovascular outcome trial results on management patterns in such patients remains to be seen.