Significance of HbA1c in Monitoring Diabetes at the Public Hospital, Guyana

Aim: To determine the prevalence of baseline/mean HbA1c among patients with suspected diabetes using Bio-Rad for the first time at a public hospital in Guyana. Methods: A retrospective, laboratory-based, descriptive study examined 1,547 diabetic patients who underwent repeat HbA1c testing at a public hospital laboratory in Guyana between 2010 and 2014. All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS 21.0, JMP and Microsoft Excel. Distributions were used to show frequencies, the bivariate fit test was done to achieve correlations and significance, the χ2 test was used to compare the differences in proportions and ANOVA was used for differences in mean differences. Results: A total of 1,547 patients were identified for the study. Mean age and standard deviation (SD) was 59.9 ± 11.47 (95% CI 59.3 - 60.4). Mean value for test 1 HbA1c was 9.2 ± 2.7 (95% CI 9.1-9.3), test 2 HbA1c recorded 9.1 ± 2.5 (95% CI 8.9-9.2), test 3 HbA1c was 9.6 ± 2.6 (95% CI 9.3-9.9) and test 4 HbA1c recorded a mean of 9.6 ± 2.6 (95% CI 9.0-10.2). Conclusions: The mean HbA1c of the diabetic population was observed to be higher than the baseline in all tests