Thursday, December 29, 2005

Top 10 issues in hospital medicine for 2005, issue 9

Inpatient glycemic control

Although this issue has been out there a few years it continued to be a major focus of interest among hospitalists in 2005. Thinking was changed after ground breaking investigation was published in NEJM in 2001. This study of critically ill patients in a surgical intensive care unit demonstrated reduced morbidity and mortality attributable to tight post operative glycemic control. Of interest, only 13% of the patients had a prior history of diabetes. Now intensive insulin therapy in hospitalized patients had become an intervention to reduce mortality and complications. Subsequent studies have validated the intervention across a wider spectrum of hospitalized patients. I previously blogged and cited additional references here.

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