Newly Diagnosed Type 2 Diabetic Population in Belgium

We read with interest the article by Hillier and Pedula (1). The authors stated that, so far, no study has evaluated baseline metabolic profiles in a newly diagnosed type 2 diabetic population. However, in Belgium a few years ago, a registration of newly diagnosed people with type 2 diabetes was performed in a network of ∼130 sentinel general practices throughout the country. Due to lack of inscription lists by the family physician in our liberal health care system, the free choice of physician within primary, secondary, and tertiary health care and the dissemination of parts of the medical file over the various health care providers that resulted, it was not easy to collect basic population data about sickness and health. Therefore, this method of registration by volunteering family physicians is the only validated (2,3) method to gather at least some epidemiological primary care figures in Belgium.

Data of 651 patients were registered in two consecutive years, 1997 and 1998. After diagnosis of a new patient with type 2 diabetes, the participating family physician ticked a weekly …