One in ten Aragonese over 40 years of age has diabetes

11% of Aragonese people over 40 years of age who were treated in the Community's health centers and clinics during 2020 they suffered from diabetes. The basic health zones of Monsoon Rural, in Huesca, and Utrils, a Teruel, are those that register a higher percentage of diabetic patients on the population served, with 13,4% of the cases. At the opposite extreme would be the Teruel municipality of flycatcher (6%).

These are some of the conclusions drawn from the Spanish Atlas for the monitoring of diabetes care of 2020 – which is led by the Data Science group for research in health services and policies, of the Aragonese Institute of Health Sciences (IACS)–, and which includes the autonomous communities of Aragon, Navarra, the Basque Country, Cantabria, Asturias, Madrid, Valencian Community, Murcia, Balearics y Canary Islands. Catalonia is expected to join soon.

nrique Bernal-Delgado, principal investigator, explains that in 2014 work began on the diabetes atlas, which addresses both pharmaceutical prescription – which is presented for the first time – and care monitoring in general. In Aragon, references are included from the 123 basic health zones of the Community and the health areas, with information on different indicators between men and women and between populations with different socioeconomic levels: "This allows us to see where a health center is located in comparison with others to see where they need to improve in their care of diabetic patients. The atlas thus allows us to identify both areas of excellence and improvement in the control of this disease and in the way of treating patients..

The Atlas of Pharmaceutical Prescription in Diabetes of Aragón, in 2020, detects "some practices that should be improved." In this sense, it includes the polypharmacy –843 diabetic patients took at least four antidiabetic medications– or the therapeutic inertia: 33,5% of diabetics under 75 years of age still do not control their glycosylated hemoglobin, despite having been on treatment for several months.

The IACS Data Science group for research in health services and policies, made up of doctors, engineers, epidemiologists, engineers, economists, statisticians, physicists and biologists, has been preparing the Atlas of Variations in Medical Practice for years, in which that the performance of health care is 'mapped' for the entire National Health System. Since 2002, more than fifteen Atlases of Medical Practice Variations and several updates have been published. In addition, they have served as inspiration for the creation of new projects and platforms for analyzing health services in Europe.

Source: Heraldo de Aragón