International Diabetes Federation Guidelines for the Managemnt of Type 2 Diabetes

Several national and international evidences demonstrate a wide variability of diabetes care. As a consequence in recent years a growing number of protocols and guidelines have been proposed in order to rationalise and standardise the delivery of care. Nevertheless frequently recommendations remain unapplied and targets are not reached due to the fact that guidelines usually reflect high level of care impossible to be implemented in most local environments. To overcome such difficulty the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) launched in 2005 the Global Guidelines for Type 2 Diabetes. The novel approach of IDF consists of tailoring indications derived from "evidence based medicine" to local specific conditions thus allowing the best diabetes care to be delivered according to each specific condition. Three different levels of care have been proposed, standard, minimal and comprehensive, in order to guarantee that each person with diabetes has the possibility to benefit of a proved effective diabetes care irrespective of the level of available resources den of diabetes and atherosclerosis is to search for simultaneous prevention and treatment of the two diseases.