Type 2 Diabetes Victims Spend $85,500 to Treat The Disease

A study that aims at understanding the financial return on avoiding and delaying the onset of type 2 diabetes discovered that a person spends an average of $85,000 to treat the disease over his/her lifetime.

The study notes that earlier the diabetes is diagnosed, greater is the lifetime costs. The researchers also found that women spend more in treating the disease and its complications compared to men. The lifetime costs for women are higher than the men.

This research was conducted by researchers at the CDC and Research Triangle International, NC.

"Anything that can prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes could lead to a sizeable reduction in healthcare costs in the future," the researchers said.

The main aim of the study was to understand the financial return preventing and delaying the occurrence of type 2 diabetes and to know about the long term financial impact of new diabetes cases along with its complications.

Xiaohui Zhuo, Ph.D., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and lead author of the study said, "This has become increasingly important given the rapid increase of the number of the incident cases in the U.S. and worldwide."

In this study, the researchers designed a simulation model that was used to determine the costs of treating type 2 diabetes as well as its complications over a lifetime in those who had recently been affected with the disease.

Based on the model the researchers learnt that if between the ages of 25 to 44  a man is diagnosed with diabetes then he spends around $124,700 on the disease over his lifetime. On the other hand, a woman who is diagnosed with type 2 diabetes within the same age range, may incur $130,800 over her lifetime. When the disease is diagnosed in later life, the costs reduce.

Nearly 53 percent of the lifetime costs is spent in treating complications that occur due to diabetes and 57 percent of that is spent in complications that occur due to damage to large blood vessels that can lead to fatal heart diseases and stroke.

"This is a different approach to a calculation of the costs of diabetes," said Robert E. Ratner, M.D., chief scientific and medical officer at the American Diabetes Association.  "A better way of doing it is to note that in 2012, in the U.S., we actually had $176 billion in direct medical costs treating people with diabetes," he said. "This is up 40 percent in five years."

Visits to doctors, medications and testing supplies all fall under the direct medical costs. It also includes treating complications like amputations, strokes and eye damage.

In the last 12 years there has been a 50 percent fall in the need for amputations and a 35 percent drop in kidney diseases that require dialysis.

The study is reported in American Journal of Preventive Medicine.