Introduction:

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a chronic metabolic disorder that is increasing in the pediatric population and leads to multiple microvascular and macrovascular complications. It is a public health problem due to the high costs of diagnosis and treatment. According to the International Diabetes Federation (IFD) the annual incidence in the world is increasing, due to an age prevalence between 0-14 years of 98.2% and 0-19 years of 128.9% between 2019 and 2021 with an incidence of 108.3% and 149.5% respectively per 100,000 inhabitants in 215 countries.

Objective:

To describe the clinical characteristics of a group of children and adolescents admitted to the emergency department of the Hospital Regional de la Orinoquía (HORO) in Yopal-Casanare in the period 2019 to 2020 with de novo or previous diagnosis of diabetes mellitus.

Methodology:

An observational, descriptive, and retrospective study, case series type, where patients under 18 years of age with de novo or previous diagnosis of diabetes mellitus were included in the period from 2019 to 2020 in the Orinoquía Regional Hospital.

Results:

The classification of the patients according to age group and sex shows a predominance of the male gender with 53.3% of the 15 patients who met the diagnostic criteria, while the female population was 46.6%. The average age of the pediatric patients was 13 ± 13.2

Conclusions:

The study carried out at the Hospital Regional de la Orinoquía showed that the most frequent age group was 11 to 13 years old, with a significant predominance of males, coming from urban areas. It was found that low weight is an alarming fact plus altered glycemia values are related to the complications presented at the time of the patient's admission, which represents a public health problem among children and young adults due to the heterogeneity of the genetic and environmental factors.

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