Screening for Diabetes. All members shall receive a fasting or two-hour post-prandial serum glucose measurement at least once.
Screening for Diabetes. In view of the steady increase of life expectancy and the corresponding rise of chronic disease rates during the past decade, health promotion and primary and secondary preventive health services have become more and more important (Shippee et al., 2012). There is now an emphasis on services which aim to prevent disease and illness through disease surveillance, and surveillance for disability and other health problems, providing advice and counselling on good health maintenance and well-being through living a healthy lifestyle (DoH, 1989). This is often demonstrated in screening programmes that have been developed to comply with the idea of health checks and surveillance. Screening is a process of identifying apparently healthy people who may be at increased risk of a disease or condition (Xxxxxxx et al., 2013). They can then be offered information, further tests and appropriate treatment to reduce their risk or any complications arising from the disease or condition (Xxxxx et al., 2013). Screening is not the same as diagnosis: most screening programmes look for risk factors for a particular disease of condition. Some individuals with these risk factors will never develop the condition or disease, and some who develop the disease or condition will not be picked up by screening. When choosing who to screen and for which conditions, the benefits are weighed against the xxxxx (Xxxxxx & X'Xxxxxx, 2010; UK National Screening Committee, 2014). It is well-recognised that T2D has become a huge burden for the worldwide general adult population (UK National Screening Committee, 2008, 2014). The review by the National Screening Committee in 2014 found that interest in screening had been stimulated by a number of factors including the rising number of people with diabetes and with people with raised blood sugar who do not meet the formal level for a diagnosis of diabetes. The committee recognised that primary prevention measures (such as lifestyle change) were having a limited effect, increased understanding of how raised blood sugar (at any level) related to a broad range of vascular risk, change in international views on testing, improvement in management of diagnosed diabetes and developments in treatment of people with raised blood sugar but who were not diabetic. The review came to the conclusion that, on the balance of the evidence, universal screening was not recommended. However, the report suggested that this did not rule out the value of early detection in h...
