Diabetes Experts Issue New Recommendations for Inpatient Glycemic Control - Call for Systemic Changes in Hospitals ...( JACKSONVILLE Fla. and ALEXANDRIA Va. ...),Health

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. and ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- New recommendations released today by a consensus group of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) and the American Diabetes Association (ADA) are calling for major changes in the way health care professionals treat hospitalized patients with high blood glucose (sugar) levels. The authors recommend revised glucose targets of 140-180 mg/dL in the ICU setting, and between 100-180 mg/dL for most patients admitted to general medical-surgical wards.

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The recommendations, which were published online today and will appear in the June issues of Endocrine Practice (Link here) and Diabetes Care (Link here), come at a time when attempts to intensively manage glucose targets in the ICU setting have shown inconsistent results in patient outcomes. Several recent randomized controlled clinical trials in critically ill patients in ICUs with diabetes or elevated blood glucose levels have failed to show a significant improvement in mortality with intensive insulin therapy to achieve near normal glucose levels. Moreover, a large newly-published randomized controlled trial showed an increase in mortality risk associated with intensive control of glycemia targeting blood glucose of 80-110 mg/dL. These outcomes have raised concerns regarding specific glycemic targets and the means for achieving them in both critically and non-critically ill patients.

Recognizing the importance of glycemic control across the continuum of care, experts from AACE and ADA were invited to develop an upda
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