Type 1 Diabetes in Adults: Diagnosis and Management

Excerpt

Type 1 diabetes affects over 370,000 adults in the UK, representing approximately 10% of adults diagnosed with diabetes. Given the complexity of its treatment regimens, successful outcomes depend, perhaps more than with any other long-term condition, on full engagement of the adult with type 1 diabetes in life-long day-by-day self-management. In order to support this, the health service needs to provide informed, expert support, education and training as well as a range of other more conventional biomedical services and interventionsfor the prevention and management of long term complications and disability.

The number of adults with type 1 diabetes means that, while the condition is certainly not rare, it is not common enough to provide and maintain all the necessary skills in its management for all healthcare professionals who will deal with it. The aim of this guideline is, therefore, to provide evidence-based, practical advice on the steps necessary to support adults with type 1 diabetes to live full, largely unrestricted, lives and avoid the acute and long-term complications of both the disease and of its treatment. NICE last produced such a guideline in 2004. The present guideline is an update of many sections of that guideline, focusing on areas where new knowledge and new treatment opportunities have arisen in the last decade. There have been many such developments, resulting in improving outcomes for adults with type 1 diabetes, but also presenting more challenges in the diversity and complexity of the tools they now have to achieve these outcomes.