Rehabilitation of Type 2 Diabetes Patients.

Type 2 diabetes is major and growing health care problem and is associated with premature mortality and increased morbidity. At the time of diagnosis half of the patients have cardiovascular, renal, ophthalmic or neurological disease. A recent Danish intervention study found a marked reduction in cardiovascular events and microvascular complications in a group of patients with type 2 diabetes and microalbuminuria using an intensive multifactorial pharmacologic intervention and lifestyle intervention (3). The achieved changes in lifestyle seems however to vanish after a short period. Lack of information, unawareness of the seriousness of the disease and lack of supervised training and insufficient follow-up may be of importance of the long-term outcome in these patients. A total number of 180 patients with type 2 diabetes, will be randomized to the intervention group or to standard care. This study tests an intensive intervention of lifestyle by a newly developed program of rehabilitation compared with routine standards in a randomized controlled design. Provided that a significant positive outcome is found, the non-pharmacologic treatment of type 2 diabetes could be optimized and inpatient hospitalization due to complications could be avoided.