Glycemic control and use of glucose-lowering medications in hospital-admitted type 2 diabetes patients over 80 years

Treatment guidelines for type 2 diabetes (T2D) recommend avoidance of hypoglycemia and less stringent glycemic control in older patients. We examined the relation of glycemic control to glucose-lowering medications use in a cohort of patients aged>80 years with a diagnosis of T2D and a hospital admission in the Capital Region of Denmark in 2012–2016. We extracted data on medication use, diagnoses, and biochemistry from the hospitals’ records. We identified 5,172 T2D patients with high degree of co-morbidity and where 17% had an HbA(1c) in the range recommended for frail, comorbid, older patients with type 2 diabetes (58–75 mmol/mol (7.5–9%)). Half of the patients (n = 2,575) had an HbA(1c) <48 mmol/mol (<6.5%), and a majority of these (36% of all patients) did not meet the diagnostic criteria for T2D. Of patients treated with one or more glucose-lowering medications (n = 1,758), 20% had HbA(1c)-values <42 mmol/mol (<6%), and 1% had critically low Hba(1c) values <30 mmol/mol (<4.9%), In conclusion, among these hospitalized T2D patients, few had an HbA(1c) within the generally recommended glycemic targets. One third of patients did not meet the diagnostic criteria for T2D, and of the patients who were treated with glucose-lowering medications, one-fifth had HbA(1c)-values suggesting overtreatment.