Glucose Intolerance in Intensive Care Patients: Incidence and Outcome

Abstract

Glucose is an important metabolic substrate in mammalian cells; it can be metabolized by series of reactions that extract energy from it or convert it into other important products as free fatty acids, amino acids and glycogen. It's important for cellular function to regulate glucose homeostasis; maintaining blood glucose at a steady-state level. Glucose homeostasis is mediated by a number of hormones that are involved in glucose metabolism and maintenance of normoglycemia. It’s achieved by balance between the ability to stimulate glucose consumption while suppressing endogenous glucose production, keeping the concentration of blood glucose level constant at 70 – 110 mg/dl. The aim of our study was to evaluate the incidence and outcome of glucose intolerance in intensive care population. Our study was carried out randomly on 290 patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) of Sidnawy hospital for health insurance and EL – Zaitoun hospital, from December 2018 to January 2020. Ninety one out of the 290 patients were females and 199 were males. One hundred seventy four patients were diabetics and 116 patients didn’t have history of diabetes. On admission, 83 patients (28.6%) were normoglycemic, 8 patients were hypoglycemic, 199 patients were hyperglycemic (68.6%). Of them, 55 patients (19 %) were mild hyperglycemic, 12 patients (4.1 %) were moderate hyperglycemic and 132 patients (45.5%) had sever hyperglycemia; out of them only 20 patients (6.9%) weren’t known diabetic.