What happened to close management of diabetes requiring insulin during the pandemic? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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When someone is taking insulin for diabetes, it’s important to monitor and manage its use, but during the pandemic, that didn’t happen. That’s according to research by Rita Kalyani, a diabetes expert at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues.

Kalyani: We saw that between 2019 and 2020, when the pandemic hit, that there was an 18% decrease in visits for insulin, and as we talk about access to care during the pandemic this suggests that perhaps people using insulin weren’t coming to see their provider as often as before though they could have still been taking it at home but perhaps not having as aggressive titration or changes to their insulin regimen as they should have been.    :28

Kalyani urges anyone who postponed visits to the clinician managing their diabetes during the pandemic to try to be seen, even if it’s a telemedicine visit. People with diabetes are at higher risk for severe Covid-19 disease that may be impacted by very good blood sugar control. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.