Effectiveness of the presence of diabetologists for perioperative complications in patients with diabetes undergoing colorectal cancer surgery: A nationwide inpatient database in Japan.

Aims/introduction: Little is known about the effect of diabetologists on perioperative complication risk. Given that colorectal cancer surgery is known to carry a high complication risk among patients with diabetes, this study aimed to examine the association between the presence of diabetologists at the facility level and the risk of perioperative complications during colorectal cancer surgery.

Materials and methods: In this retrospective cohort study, we sourced the number of board-certified diabetologists from the Japan Diabetes Society and combined it with Diagnosis Procedure Combination (DPC) data, encompassing receipt data from acute care facilities across Japan. We used a modified Poisson model to estimate the risk of perioperative complications associated with the presence of diabetologists by adjusting for potential confounding patient and facility factors.

Results: Analysis included 887 facilities, of which 299 (34%) had no diabetologists. A total of 24,714 patients with diabetes underwent colorectal cancer surgery between April 2018 and March 2019, with a median age of 73 years (interquartile range: 67-79 years) and 16,274 (66%) men. There were 3,165 (13%) perioperative complications. After adjustment, the risk of perioperative complications was 0.86 times (95% confidence interval: 0.77-0.96) lower in centers with at least one diabetologist than in those without a diabetologist.

Conclusions: Our study suggests that the presence of a diabetologist may be important in reducing the risk of perioperative complications during colorectal cancer surgery in patients with diabetes. Future studies factoring in other facility factors and surgical types may be required to further validate our findings.