http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...ose-100-000-patients-wrong-type.html#comments I have just read this and wonder if there is any cause for concern - although i do not take too much notice of these 'scaremongering' reads, as a rather skinny T2 with a healthy diet and lifestyle I have always found it hard to accept being diabetic. However, all I wonder is there is anyway how possible it may be to continue being under the wrong diagnosis, many blood tests later?
Misdiagnoses news in the Mail
- Thread starter HpprKM
- Start Date
This was also brought up in this thread recently and Benedict posted a link to a very revealing NHS document which covers the misdiagnosis problem along with the obvious poor knowledge of Diabetes in many HCP's.
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=19733&p=180953#p180953
Looks like we need places like this Forum all the more as we are definitely more clued up than a lot of HCP's where Diabetes is concerned........sad when you think about it.
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=19733&p=180953#p180953
Looks like we need places like this Forum all the more as we are definitely more clued up than a lot of HCP's where Diabetes is concerned........sad when you think about it.
LittleSue
Well-Known Member
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- Type of diabetes
- Type 1
- Treatment type
- Pump
Sadly the misdiagnoses article didn't surprise me.
HCPs seem to treat 'type 2 diabetes' as a word rather than a phrase, they can't say 'diabetes' without saying 'type 2'.
I work in a hospital where many of our patients take steroids, and many are diabetic.
A patient comes the first time, a detailed history is recorded with correct diagnoses, but then it morphs from T1 to T2 by default (I don't mean when the diagnosis is revised or questioned). Suppose the intial referral says the person has had T1 since childhood and got the condition requiring steroids 30 years later. After a few more clinic appointments the diagnosis in hospital notes has morphed to 'steroid-induced T2 diabetes'! This means that when hospital care episodes are 'coded' in a database according to diagnosis, treatment, outcome etc, there is potential for statistics on diabetes and complications to get skewed.
Worse still if their diabetes is never mentioned again so subsequent doctors don't know and don't warn the patient that steroid dose changes will affect bs. I've seen this happen and someone reported symptoms consistent with hypos, the consultant urged the GP to prescribe test strips to check, but the GP refused.... eventually testing confirmed they were having hypos and potentially driving while hypo, the GP having insisted T2s don't get hypos.
No wonder the non-diabetic public, and the newly-diagnosed, get confused!
HCPs seem to treat 'type 2 diabetes' as a word rather than a phrase, they can't say 'diabetes' without saying 'type 2'.
I work in a hospital where many of our patients take steroids, and many are diabetic.
A patient comes the first time, a detailed history is recorded with correct diagnoses, but then it morphs from T1 to T2 by default (I don't mean when the diagnosis is revised or questioned). Suppose the intial referral says the person has had T1 since childhood and got the condition requiring steroids 30 years later. After a few more clinic appointments the diagnosis in hospital notes has morphed to 'steroid-induced T2 diabetes'! This means that when hospital care episodes are 'coded' in a database according to diagnosis, treatment, outcome etc, there is potential for statistics on diabetes and complications to get skewed.
Worse still if their diabetes is never mentioned again so subsequent doctors don't know and don't warn the patient that steroid dose changes will affect bs. I've seen this happen and someone reported symptoms consistent with hypos, the consultant urged the GP to prescribe test strips to check, but the GP refused.... eventually testing confirmed they were having hypos and potentially driving while hypo, the GP having insisted T2s don't get hypos.
No wonder the non-diabetic public, and the newly-diagnosed, get confused!
No wonder the non-diabetic public, and the newly-diagnosed, get confused!
The general public, as most diabetics know, have little understanding of diabetes - I cannot blame them - there is little publicity on the topic, it is almost treated like an illness that is a given - giving a blase attitude of 'oh she is diabetic', and most people have no idea just how harmful it can be. I was one of those people before being diagnosed as diabetic T2 three years ago. I almost considered it was something you born with, it was genetic and that since my parents were not diabetic (as far as we knew) it wasn't something I even needed to consider. How wrong was I? Not only that, but my brother was also diagnosed shortly after me.
A colleague at work, when biscuits were being offered around said 'Oh you can't have them as you might have a turn' (she meant going hypo), I tried to explain that I was on metformin and not insulin so that was not likely to happen, I sure she did not understand, who would? It is a complicated disease!
I think that all diabetics have a duty to advise and publicise diabetes, not hide in the closet. I tell people I am diabetic, I am not ashamed - what is to be ashamed about! Another colleague, when asking to borrow sugar from our office, I told him that I did not use it, he said 'You are lucky', I said 'Not really, I am diabetic'. Did I need to? No I guess I didn't, but somehow it irked me that he (unknowingly) told me I was lucky Yet I am lucky, because I am aware and many, many people are not, that is why we need to publise the symptoms, dangers etc of diabetes.
The general public, as most diabetics know, have little understanding of diabetes - I cannot blame them - there is little publicity on the topic, it is almost treated like an illness that is a given - giving a blase attitude of 'oh she is diabetic', and most people have no idea just how harmful it can be. I was one of those people before being diagnosed as diabetic T2 three years ago. I almost considered it was something you born with, it was genetic and that since my parents were not diabetic (as far as we knew) it wasn't something I even needed to consider. How wrong was I? Not only that, but my brother was also diagnosed shortly after me.
A colleague at work, when biscuits were being offered around said 'Oh you can't have them as you might have a turn' (she meant going hypo), I tried to explain that I was on metformin and not insulin so that was not likely to happen, I sure she did not understand, who would? It is a complicated disease!
I think that all diabetics have a duty to advise and publicise diabetes, not hide in the closet. I tell people I am diabetic, I am not ashamed - what is to be ashamed about! Another colleague, when asking to borrow sugar from our office, I told him that I did not use it, he said 'You are lucky', I said 'Not really, I am diabetic'. Did I need to? No I guess I didn't, but somehow it irked me that he (unknowingly) told me I was lucky
Yet I am lucky, because I am aware and many, many people are not, that is why we need to publise the symptoms, dangers etc of diabetes.