Authors (including presenting author) :
Wong CM, Lai KPL, Luk MHM, Chan PF
Affiliation :
Department of Family Medicine and Primary Healthcare, Kowloon East Cluster
Introduction :
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first described in December 2019 and later being declared as a pandemic by World Health Organization in March 2020. Hong Kong Government had imposed social distancing measures to halt the transmission in the community. It was expected that the control of many chronic diseases including diabetes would be affected due to the significant change in lifestyle of patients. Despite there were tremendous international studies on the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the metabolic control in diabetic patients, data in local studies were lacking. This study was therefore conducted to provide insight on how well our public health care system in managing diabetic patients and the results could guide future strategic planning in managing chronic diseases during the pandemic.
Objectives :
To evaluate the impact of social distancing measures due to COVID-19 pandemic on glycemic and blood pressure control in primary care in Hong Kong.
Methodology :
This was a retrospective cross-sectional study. Diabetic patients with regular follow-up in all KEC General Out-patient Clinics within the study period were included for randomization. The study included 2 groups of patients which were the pre-pandemic group (2019 group, study period from 11 Feb 2020 to 10 March 2020) and the 1-year post-pandemic group (2020 group, study period from 11 Feb 2021 to 10 March 2021). The outcomes were to detect any difference of HbA1c levels and blood pressure between the two groups in all patients and in sub-group analysis of different age groups, sex, body mass index, presence of diabetic complications and different diabetic treatment.
Result & Outcome :
Results
There were 1,605 patients in 2019 group and 1,507 patients in 2020 group. Among all the recruited patients, the mean age was 66.0 10.6 years with 46.0% were male. There was no statistically significant change in HbA1c level between 2020 and 2019 groups (0.019%, p=0.632). There was also no statistically significant change in both systolic and diastolic BP between 2020 and 2019 groups which were -0.143mmHg (p=0.745) and 0.148mmHg (p=0.611) respectively. Subgroup analysis showed that female gender had statistically significant improvement in glycaemic control (HbA1c 6.92% in 2020 group versus HbA1c 7.03% in 2019 group, p=0.021).
Conclusions:
Despite the implementation of various social distancing measures resulting in significant change in lifestyle, the glycaemic and blood pressure control did not worsen among diabetes patients in in local primary care during COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, slight improvement in glycaemic control among female patients was found.
