A diabetes education charity has hit out at claims that structured diabetes education programmes fail to show results in patients. X-Pert Health, which offers six-week education programmes to people living with diabetes, responded to claims in a major study based on the outcomes for people who attended a one-day DESMOND course.
The report states that patients who attended the NICE-backed course showed little improvement in blood glucose levels, physical activity and smoking. This is being interpreted as casting “doubt over the validity of NICE guidelines that recommend all patients diagnosed with diabetes are given ‘structured education’ around the time of diagnosis, and annually thereafter”. X-Pert commented that people who have attended its courses, which are offered free to patients through the NHS, have seen significant improvements in their health and lifestyle. Dr Trudi Deakin, chief executive of X-Pert (pictured), said: “While other programmes may not be able to offer demonstrable improvements, our results speak for themselves – we can prove our participants have halted, and in some cases even reversed the progression of Type 2 diabetes. In light of this, we object to the generalisation that structured education is not an effective way of dealing with diabetes.” An audit of the outcomes of over 23,000 people who attended X-Pert self-management courses showed an average weight loss of 3.1kg per person over the course of a year, while waist circumference dropped by an average of 2.4cm over a two-year period. Blood pressure, blood glucose and cholesterol levels also saw a significant drop among participants.
