Screening for diabetes in general practice

doi:10.1136/bmj.324.7334.425/a

BMJ 2002;324:425 ( 16 February )

Letters

Screening for diabetes in general practice

Opportunistic screening for diabetes in general practice is better than nothing

Population screening for diabetes is cost effective

Workload studies as well as clinical trials should be considered when drawing up guidelines

Opportunistic screening for diabetes in general practice is better than nothing

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ Lawrence et al conclude in their paper that screening for diabetes in general practice by measuring fasting blood concentrationsof glucose has a very low yield in patients whose sole risk factorfor diabetes is age 45 or more.¹ Our experience from opportunisticscreening in a rural primary health centre in Sweden isdifferent.

A sign in the waiting room during 1999 invited all visitors aged 40 or older at the centre in Storvik, a village of 6800 inhabitants,to have their blood concentrations of glucose tested. Altogether249 patients accepted, of whom 72 had a non-fasting capillaryblood concentration of glucose of >6.7 mmol/l.

The latter group was invited to return for two further tests. Sixty two showed up, and 18 of these had a capillary blood concentrationof glucose of >6.1 mmol/l in both tests. ² ³ Five were agedaround 50, and eight were aged 75 or older. Altogether 349 testswere performed. The cost of materials . . . [Full text of this article]

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Screening for diabetes in general practice: cross sectional population study: James M Lawrence, Paul Bennett, Alan Young, and Anthony M Robinson
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