PCDS Update Days6 May 2009

The Primary Care Diabetes Society (PCDS) and Diabetes and Primary Care Journal are organising a series of ten Update Days this spring.

They all have the same basic programme but delivered by different speakers at the various venues.  All the days are sponsored by a single pharmaceutical company but, at the one attended by three tutors from the Training Centre, it would have been difficult to guess which company was involved, such was the impartiality of the speakers.  Attendance is free.

Although the programme was entitled "Understanding new therapies in diabetes", the programme was split fairly evenly between new therapies (i.e. drugs which act on the incretin system), trial evidence and guidelines.

At Birmingham, Doug Robertson summed up recent trial evidence concentrating on the trials which had appeared to show an increase in mortality when exceptionally high glycæmic control is obtained.  The bottom line seems to be that the initial target should be for very tight control but that this can be relaxed (slightly) as the years go by.

Roger Gadsby concentrated on the new QOF indicators.  It seemed as if the targets (points mean prizes) were the main thrust of this presentation with patient care lagging a little behind.

The admirable Stephen Gough did an excellent summary of the various incretin-system drugs - GLP1 analogues and DPP-IV antagonists/gliptins and the first part was concluded by Kamlesh Khunti on the new NICE guidelines which contain nothing surprising and could have been written by anyone well up in the field of Primary Care managed diabetes.

The second part of the afternoon consisted of some excellent case studies.  The audience had natty little keypads on which they could vote on various alternatives which were then displayed as bar charts.  Just in case anyone had ideas, the organisers were very keen that none of the keypads walked so they must be quite expensive.  All five cases involved patients already taking therapy with gradually deteriorating glycæmic control.  The session was excellently led by Kamlesh Khunti and Roger Gadsby; the latter finishing off the day looking at regional issues.

If you fancy an afternoon out, there are still seven of these afternoons which you could attend on 14th May (Ipswich), 19th May (Southampton), 20th May (London), 19th June (Cardiff), 23rd June (Belfast), 29th June (Leeds) and 6th July (Manchester).  Write to holly@sbcommunicationsgroup.com if you are interested.