3.1 | Participants
From January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2012, a total of 36 853 persons were diagnosed as having T2DM with compensated cirrhosis and were undergoing anti-diabetes treatment. After exclusion of ineligible cases, 2047 persons received insulin treatment for at least 28 days, and 17 173 persons had never received insulin during the follow-up period. Figure 1 depicts the flowchart of patient selection for this study.
Before matching, insulin users presented higher proportions of young age, young ages at diabetes diagnosis, medications use, hepatitis infection than insulin nonusers. People with high CCI and DCSI scores were found among insulin users than among insulin nonusers (Table 1). After propensity score matching, 2047 insulin users and 4094 insulin nonusers were selected. Of insulin users, 1650 (80.61%), 1289 (62.97%), and 1781 (87.01%) persons used basal insulin, premixed insulin, and prandial insulin, respectively. The matched patients are similar in all variables. The mean age of this cohort was 55.09 years, the mean duration of diabetes was 3.13 years, and the HBV and HCV infection rates were 23.33% and 19.76%, respectively. The mean follow-up time was 5.79 years for insulin users and 5.88 years for nonusers.