Educational Interventions in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients in Primary Health Care: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Author(s):

Yousef M Alluhaymid*, Yara Abdullah Alessa, Aisha Ahmed Alhikan, Ghadeer Ali Albalawi, Wejdan Ali Alrasheed, Hissah Khazzam Aldawsari, Lamees Abdullah Alabdulgader, Alaa Mohammed Almutawa, Faris Nafel Alharbi, Aseel Ahmed Alzahrani and Ahmed Hassan Al Hussain

Background: Diabetes self-management education (DSME) is a critical part of diabetes care. Guidelines for the treatment of diabetes recommend that all diabetes patients must take part in DSME to enhance clinical outcomes and quality of life. Aim: This work aims to assess the impact of educational interventions in type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (DM) patients in primary health care. Materials and Methods: A systematic search was performed over different medical databases to identify Family Medicine studies, which studied the outcome of the Interventional group versus the Control group of primary health care DM patients. Using the meta-analysis process, either with fixed or random-effects models, we conducted a meta-analysis on HbA1C difference as the main outcome measure. Results: Ten studies were identified involving 3335 patients, with 1635 patients in the Interventional group, and 1700 patients in the Control group. The meta-analysis process revealed a highly significant decrease in mean HbA1C in the Interventional group compared to the Control group (p = 0.001). Conclusion: To conclude, educational interventions in primary care addressing T2DM could be effective for metabolic control, but the low quality of the evidence and the lack of measurement of critical results generate uncertainty and highlight the need for high-quality trials.