Frequency of peripheral neuropathy in newly diagnosed patients of diabetes mellitus iion clinical and electrophysiological basis

Objective: To determine the frequency of peripheral neuropathy in newly diagnosed patients of Diabetes Mellitus type II on clinical and electrophysiological basis. Methods: This is Hospital based descriptive cross sectional study conducted at department of Neurology Civil Hospital Karachi/ Dow University of Health Sciences from 20th December 2011 to 20th June 2012. Data was collected from Neurology OPD, Medicine OPD and Diabetic Clinic Civil Hospital Karachi. Results: Total no of patients were 107 who were already diagnosed as type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. Out of these, there were 57 (53.3%) male patients and 50 (46.7%) female patients, with ratio of males to female was . 1.14The age group distribution of study population ranged from 30-60 years and mean age was 45.19 with standard deviation of 7.38. It was observed that 35 (32.7%) patients had symptoms of peripheral neuropathy as compared to this 72 (67.3.2%) patients did not have symptoms of peripheral neuropathy while mean ± standard deviation of duration of symptoms was 2.42±1.95 months and 18 (16.8%) patients had peripheral neuropathy as compared to these 89 (83.2%) patients did not have peripheral neuropathy, clinical or electrophysiological. Conclusion: Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy is a fairly common entity in our patients with type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and was seen as early as within four weeks of diagnosis in 16.8% of patients.