DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2016.v04i08.002

Pages: 2739-2745

India has earned the dubious distinction of being the diabetic capital of the world and there are an estimated 62 million people with diabetes in India today. Unfortunately, over half of these people remain undiagnosed as diabetes is a “silent” disease. The need for a simple screening tool for detecting undiagnosed people with diabetes in the community is therefore obvious. The Indian Diabetes Risk Score (IDRS), a simple screening tool for prediction of undiagnosed diabetes. As it is impractical to screen an entire population, we can aim to screen ‘risk groups’ such as high socio-economic strata or those with a high BMI. This study shows a higher prevalence amongst these ‘risk groups’. The Indian Diabetes Risk Score, derived by CURES, proves to be a worthy screening program for early detection of diabetes. This score should be recommended for usage by family physicians& health care workers, so that they may advise their patients in a better manner. There should be implementation of universal screening and primary prevention programs to detect diabetes at an earlier stage before development of complications.