More Frequent Doctor Visits Helps Your Blood Sugar

October 3rd, 2011

written by Michael O’Leary

Dr. Alexander Turchin

A doctor a day keeps the blood glucose at bay. Well not quite, but a new study of medical records shows that people with diabetes who visited their doctors every two weeks got their blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol under control much sooner than patients who saw their doctors at three to six month intervals.

The research team led by Dr. Alexander Turchin, of Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital analyzed the electronic medical records of 26,496 people at their institution and at Massachusetts General Hospital. All patients had either type 1 or type 2 diabetes with at least one measure of health above the recommend goals. The targets were hemoglobin A1c under 7 percent, blood pressure under 130/85 mm Hg, and LDL cholesterol under 100 mg/dL. (Link to published site)

They found that diabetes patients who were not using insulin who visited their doctors every one to two weeks reached their blood sugar goals in an average of a little more than 4 months compared to 25 months for non-insulin patients who saw their doctors every three to six months.  The frequent visit group reached their blood pressure goals within an average of 10 months compared to 53 months for the less frequent group. And the median time to cholesterol control was 5 months for the frequent group compared to 33 months for those seeing their doctors less often.

In the study published Sept. 26, 2011 in the Archives of Internal Medicine the researchers suggested that the reason why more doctor visits would lead to reaching these health goals sooner might be that doctors had more opportunity to increase the drug therapy. They note that most blood pressure, glucose and cholesterol-lowering drugs have their greatest impact within two weeks of starting the drugs.

They cautioned that because their study only involved two institutions, a broader study among multiple institutions might produce different results. Also, because it was what is known as a retrospective study, meaning they only looked back at records, they have no way of knowing what, if anything doctors were doing during the visits that may have had an impact on patients’ health. They call for a prospective randomized study, in which patients are enrolled, randomly assigned bi-weekly doctor visits or quarterly visits, and follow them over time to see if these findings can be repeated.

Until then, they do not recommend making any changes in clinical practice, and even if the results are confirmed in the future, they raise concerns about the feasibility of increasing the workload of doctors and further straining healthcare budgets.