BACKGROUND- The incidence and prevalence of diabetes in the elderly keep increasing, and diabetes-related complications contributed to high morbidity and mortality. We estimated the expected life-years (LY) saved from successful prevention of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in the elderly with diabetes. METHODS- We used the National Health Insurance Research Database to conduct a population-based cohort study in Taiwan. We identified all new ESRD cases aged over 65 receiving maintenance hemodialysis (N=24,243) from the registry files of catastrophic illnesses from July 1, 1997 to December 31, 2005. We then retrospectively searched the database if there was a diagnosis of diabetes in these new cases. Incidence rates and cumulative incidence rates of ESRD were calculated. After excluding cases with malignancy (N=3,423), we followed the survival of new cases through the end of 2006. The survival function for an age- and sex-matched reference population was generated using the Monte Carlo method from the life table of the general population. We further estimated the expected LY saved from successful prevention of ESRD in the elderly with diabetes. RESULTS- The cumulative incidence rates of requiring hemodialysis were 0.078 and 0.099 for the elderly males and females with diabetes, respectively. There were 5,430.1 LY and 10,177 LY could be saved by successful prevention of ESRD in the elderly males and females with diabetes in a year, respectively. CONCLUSIONS- The LY saved by successful prevention of ESRD in the elderly with diabetes in a year are substantial and deserve special attention, especially in the elderly females.
