Magnitude of pancreatic exocrine insufficiency and associated factors among adult diabetic patients attending Madda Walabu University Goba referral hospital, south east Ethiopia, 2019

Background: Diabetes mellitus is a group of metabolic disorders which is characterized by increased blood glucose level. It causes a lot of systemic complications including pancreatic atrophy that leads to pancreatic exocrine insufficiency. It is more common among type 1 diabetic than type 2 diabetic patients. The aim of this study was to assess magnitude of pancreatic exocrine insufficiency and associated factors among diabetic patients attending Madda Walabu University Goba referral hospital, 2019.Materials and method: An institution based cross sectional study was conducted on 286 diabetic patients during study period. The study participants were selected by systematic random sampling technique among diabetic patients attending Madda Walabu University Goba referral hospital internal medicine department. The demographic data of the study participants were collected by face to face interview. Serum and urine samples were collected from each patient and analyzed to check pancreatic exocrine insufficiency and factors associated with it. The raw data were entered in to Epi Data V 3.0.2 and exported in to SPSS V 25 for analysis. Descriptive analysis and multiple logistic regression was done and variables with 95% confidence interval and p-value less than 0.05 were used to declare statistical significance. Results: The study participants were 250 (87.4%) type 2 diabetic and 36 (12.6%) type 1 diabetic patients. Among them 21.3% suffered from pancreatic exocrine insufficiency. Amylase insufficiency found in 44.4% of type 1 and 16.0% in type 2 diabetics. But, lipase insufficiency was seen in 41.7% of type 1 and 16.0% in type 2 diabetics. The pancreatic exocrine insufficiency was higher among type 1 (44.44%) than type 2 (18.0%). Smoking habit, alcohol consumption, duration of disease, usage of hypoglycemic agents, ketosuria and type of diabetics were significantly associated with pancreatic exocrine insufficiency. Conclusion: There was an alteration of pancreatic exocrine enzyme secretion among both type 1 and type 2 diabetic patients. The habit of alcohol consumption, smoking and increase in the duration of the disease intensify the pancreatic insufficiency.