Diabetes Treatments and Related Comorbidities as Factors Influencing Hospitalization: A Cross-Sectional Study

Diet modification, as well as oral medication, are good measures to manage Diabetes Mellitus (DM). Even so, there is limited study in this particular area. Specifically, few evaluated the association of the aforementioned treatments to hospitalization. Hence, this study investigates the influence of DM treatments and their related comorbidities on the odds of hospitalization. A retrospective, cross-sectional analysis was employed. Logistic regression was performed to assess the association between the DM patient treatment and the chance of hospitalization. This study utilized data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) in 2018 (n= 30,461), a program of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The results showed that after adjusting for potential confounders, DM patients who were treated with only dietary modification had 1.40 times the odds of being hospitalized compared to those treated with oral medications. However, there is an observed protective effect of the combined treatments (medication and diet), to around OR=0.69, 95% CI: 0.49-0.97, as compared to a single treatment. In addition, the presence of at least one comorbidity among DM patients could significantly double the odds for hospitalization (OR=2.54, CI: 1.15-5.60). It is recommended that the DM treatments should incorporate both oral medication and diet modification to reduce the odds of hospitalization among DM patients.Keywords: dietary modification, oral medication, hospitalization, DM treatments, DM patient