The Secondary Intervention group had diabetes for between 1 and 15 years plus had mild diabetic eye disease. In addition, some of them had mild diabetic kidney disease. Once the patients had agreed to participate in the study, they were divided to receive one of two treatment regimens, intensive therapy or conventional therapy. In the intensive therapy group, the goal was to keep the blood glucose as near to normal as possible. In the conventional therapy group, the aim was to avoid the symptoms of diabetes.
Team approach to therapy.
Teams consisted of physician, diabetes nurse educator, nutritionist, social worker and psychologist. Patient were seen by one of the team members each month and were contacted more frequently by telephone to review and adjust their regimens. The risk of severe hypoglycemia was 3 times higher of in the intensively treated group. In addition, weight gain was observed 1.6 times more frequently in the intensive therapy group than in the conventional therapy group. Finally, there were 180 episodes of pump infections during the study period.