Sickness absence in diabetic employees.

OBJECTIVES To compare sickness absence among diabetic and non-diabetic employees. METHODS A cross sectional case-control study was conducted in a random sample of 400 diabetic employees 21--50 years old from Ljubljana that compared their sickness absence in the year 1996 with sickness absence of non-diabetic employees matched by sex, age, and occupation. Sickness absence was compared in total and also in subgroups formed by sex, age, occupation, and disability. Non-parametric statistics were used (chi(2) test, Wilcoxon matched pairs test). RESULTS The randomised sample consisted of 61.2% of men (245) and 38.8% of women (155) with a mean age of 42.5 years. Unskilled workers made up 30.2% of employees, and less than 16.4% were highly educated. Among diabetic employees there were 7.0% disabled and among non-diabetic employees 2.0%. The mean frequency of sickness absences of diabetic employees was 0.89 times in the year 1996 (95% confidence interval (95% CI) 0.70 to 1.08), and of non-diabetic employees 0.56 times (95% CI 0.47 to 0.65), p=0.01. The mean total duration of sickness absence of diabetic employees was 31.71 days (95% CI 24.86 to 38.57), of non-diabetic employees 16.57 days (95% CI 11.72 to 21.42), p<0.01. Differences were also found in subgroups but the size of subgroups was not sufficient to detect significant differences. CONCLUSIONS The study confirmed that diabetes affects the ability to work. Appropriate work and good control of the disease are important to prevent long term complications.