Endocrine Abstracts

Objectives: To identify contributing factors for insulin pump cessation in paediatric patients with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus, together with investigating the role of socio-economic status.

Design: A retrospective population-based paediatric cohort study.

Setting: Royal Hospital for Children, Glasgow. Diabetes Cohort Study.

Patients: 72 patients (out of 323) stopped insulin pump therapy. 1 patient was excluded who was being managed for transient neonatal diabetes; 11 were excluded due to insufficient data.

Main outcome measures: Data was collected from electronic clinical records from January 2015-December 2020. HbA1c values before and after pump cessation, reasons for pump cessation and SIMD (measure of deprivation: 1- most deprived, 5- least deprived) values were collected.

Results: 40/60 patients stopped pump therapy due to poor blood glucose control; with a median HbA1c before cessation of 72.5 mmol/l. 15 patients stopped insulin pump therapy due to patient preference. More females than males stopped due to patient preference (73.3%). 35 patients (58.3%) that stopped pump therapy were from an area with a SIMD quintile of 1-2, whilst 14 (23.3%) were from an area with a SIMD quintile of 4-5. There was no statistically significant difference in SIMD quintile scores in 251 patients still using insulin pump therapy.

Conclusions: Most patients stopped insulin pump therapy due to poor blood glucose control and patient preference. More patients that stopped insulin pump therapy were from a deprived area with a SIMD quintile score of 1 or 2, suggesting there are factors associated with lower income status that contribute to poor blood glucose control/insulin pump cessation.