Diabetes: Surgery & Glucose Levels

Categories:

If your glucose levels are high before you go in for surgery, you may have an increased postsurgical risk for blood clots, deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism (a blood clot in the lungs). Boris Mraovic, M.D., from the Artificial Pancreas Center at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, and his colleagues looked at the records of almost 6,500 hip- or knee-replacement-surgery patients in that facility between 2003 and 2005.

About 10 percent of those who had high glucose levels went on to develop a pulmonary embolism—that’s six times greater than the incidence seen in the general population. “The data suggest that if an individual has high blood glucose and is coming for surgery, he or she should correct it first and if possible postpone the surgery,” Dr. Mraovic says.

Unfortunately, he says, around a quarter of all surgical patients enter the hospital with elevated glucose levels. And intensive care and cardiac care patients with elevated glucose may run into added medical problems.

Dr. Mraovic does caution that this study is preliminary: What’s needed to confirm the findings, he notes, is a randomized trial of incoming patients. But in the meantime, if you are headed for surgery, talk to your doctor about making sure your glucose levels are in good control. It certainly can’t hurt your postsurgical outcome—and it may help.

By Kalia Doner – Remedylife.com

This entry was posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 and is filed under Diabetes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

« Protein Thought to Promote Cancer Does Opposite

Preventing Breast Cancer »