[Management of type 2 diabetes: from guidelines to clinical practice]

Abstract

The current era is seeing an unprecedented rise in the incidence of type 2 diabetes, related to increasing adiposity levels. In addition, the complex nature of the disease with a much younger patient group than before makes prescribing a challenging task for physicians today. The advent of incretin based agents makes therapeutics exciting but warrants judicious use given the higher prescription costs and limited safety data. At the same time, mounting evidence not only supports a "treat early" approach but also cautions against achieving tight glycaemic control too quickly in certain patient groups particularly those of long disease duration and evidence of cardiovascular disease. In this conundrum, guidelines help to bring the best clinical evidence closer to practise. In this chapter, we discuss the latest clinical guidelines for management of type 2 diabetes based on recommendations from the American Diabetes Association, the European Association for the Study of Diabetes and the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (UK). At the same time we highlight the limitations of guidelines as they are unable to provide options for all "real life" scenarios. Though guidelines are instrumental in bringing evidence closer to practise, it is ultimately up to the clinician to rationalise therapy as per the needs of the individual patient. At the same time, it is also crucial to achieve meaningful outcomes in patients' lives especially in the current "pay for performance" culture in health care with the aim of providing world class care to each and every patient with diabetes.