Abstract
Background Diabetes mellitus is a complex, chronic, metabolic disease manifested in hyperglycemia and associated with various complications, Consequently, people with diabetes have higher rates of hospital admissions than the general population. There is little information about the burden of hospitalizations of diabetic patients in Libya. Aim The aim was to identify the causes of admission of individual with diabetes and to identify the risk factors for hospitalization. Patients and methods This is a retrospective case-series study conducted in Tripoli Medical Center, Tripoli. It covers 1037 individual with diabetes admitted between 1 January 2015 and 31 December 2015. All the data were collected from the patient files. Results The mean age of the patients was 60.7 years ±15.1 standard deviation. The male-to-female ratio was 1:1. Type 2 diabetes accounted for 90.2% of the patients, 56.5% of whom had diabetes for >10 years, 40.5% had no prior chronic illness, 26.7% had hypertension, and 26.4% had multiple co-morbidities. The mean hospital stay was 6.1 days, and 60.8% of the patients were on insulin therapy. The main causes of admission were infection (23%), mainly in the chest, followed by lower extremity disease (22.4%), cardiovascular disease (19.3%), cerebrovascular disease (14.4%) and renal disease (11.8%). Conclusions The main causes of hospitalization as shown by this study were infections, and chronic complications of diabetes in the lower extremities and cardiovascular system. Most of the patients were >60 years old, had diabetes type 2 for >10 years, were on insulin treatment, and had no other comorbidity.