THE JUVENILE DIABETIC PATIENT SURVIVING TWENTY YEARS

Abstract

My purpose in this paper is to describe the physical, economic and social status of the juvenile diabetic patient surviving twenty years or more after the onset of the disease and to point out to the physician what he must look for, but not necessarily expect, in the life course of the diabetic child with onset of diabetes before his fifteenth year. The paper presents data on the first series of this kind to be reported. The data should present the most unfavorable picture which one will ever encounter in diabetes of this age group and duration, because the children in the report lived in the preinsulin era at the time of the onset of the disease. INCIDENCE As shown in table 1,1,685 juvenile diabetic patients were seen in this clinic between 1898 and March 1, 1942; of these, 1,363 were alive in 1941. Three hundred and twenty-two are dead,