PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - C. J. W. Ledford
AU  - C. Roberts
AU  - E. Whisenant
AU  - C. Walters
AU  - K. Akamiro
AU  - J. Butler
AU  - A. Ali
AU  - D. A. Seehusen
TI  - Quantifying Worsened Glycemic Control During the COVID-19 Pandemic
AID  - 10.3122/jabfm.2021.S1.200446
DP  - 2021 Feb 01
TA  - The Journal of the American Board of Family
                Medicine
PG  - S192--S195
VI  - 34
IP  - Supplement
4099  - http://www.jabfm.org/content/34/Supplement/S192.short
4100  - http://www.jabfm.org/content/34/Supplement/S192.full
SO  - J Am Board Fam Med2021 Feb 01; 34
AB  - Aims: We hypothesized that glycemic control in outpatients, measured by HbA1c, was worse during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic than in 2019. We sought to quantify how much worse and to determine if social determinants of health were associated with these differences.Materials and Methods: Data were extracted from the electronic medical records of 2 cohorts of patients seen in the family medicine clinic of a southeastern academic health center. Three hundred patients with baseline HbA1c results as well as HbA1c results in May 2019 or May 2020 were evaluated.Results: The groups had similar mean baseline HbA1c (7.65, SD = 1.50 for 2019; 7.61, SD = 1.71 for 2020; P = .85). Mean May HbA1c decreased from baseline in 2019 (7.19, SD = 1.45) but rose in 2020 (7.63, SD = 1.73), a statistically significant difference (P < .01). Controlling for age, gender, race, and insurance status, HbA1c in May 2020 (meanadj = 7.73) was significantly higher than in May 2019 (meanadj = 7.16).Conclusions: During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, glycemic control in our patient population was significantly worse than during the same period in 2019 (mean HbA1c difference = 0.57). Contrary to our expectations, we did not find associations between patient demographic variables and glycemic control, including race.