Abstract

We conducted a retrospective comparative study to determine the effect of diabetes mellitus (DM) on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exacerbations. We evaluated consecutively 75 patients hospitalized for acutely exacerbated COPD with DM and compared with a control group of COPD exacerbations without DM between 1997-99 years. We randomly selected 75 of 637 COPD patients without DM hospitalized in our clinic. We analyzed demographic characteristics, clinical features, sputum culture, frequency and duration of hospitalization, and mortality rates. Chi-square, Fishers’s exact test, Kruskal Wallis, one-way variance analysis, Mann Whitney U and student t tests were used for statistical analysis. In case group, 74.7% of the patients and 80% of the control group were male. The mean age was 69.0 years (68.6±7.0 years in the DM group, 69.4±9.1 years in the control group). The most common coexisting disease was coronary artery disease in both groups. The mean duration of hospitalization in patients with DM was 13.7±9.8 days, whereas for the patients without DM it was 10.1±6.0 days (p=0.007). The sputum culture was positive in 50% of the patients with DM versus 28.0% in the control group (p=0.022) but no difference was observed between two groups as for causative agents. As for frequency of hospitalization, clinical features, and mortality, no statistically significant differences were found between the groups. In conclusion, DM was not found to be a significant factor effecting COPD exacerbations except for the duration of hospitalization.