Diabetics most often do worse after an acute illness than individuals without diabetes. Diabetics tend to spend more days in the intensive care unit, use more ventilator support and have more complications during hospitalization for trauma:

• were more likely to experience any complication (23 percent vs. 14 percent)


• were more likely to require care in the intensive care unit (ICU) (38.4 percent vs. 35.9 percent)


• stayed in the ICU longer on average (7.6 days vs. 6.1 days)


• required longer duration of ventilator support (10.8 days vs. 8.4 days)


• developed more infections (11.3 percent vs. 6.3 percent)

Those were the findings recently reported in the July issue of Archives of Surgery (one of the JAMA/Archives journals).

What do we do then? The diabetes itself seems to complicate other serious conditions. I guess, if it can be done, diabetics should be extra careful health-wise, generally.

Authors of the abovementioned study concluded:

"Results from this study confirm that patients with diabetes mellitus are at higher risk for developing an infectious complication, despite matching for sex, age and the severity of injury.

They also require a higher level of care, which adds to the cost of hospitalization. Future studies are needed to evaluate the effect of improved glycemic control on hospitalized patients with diabetes mellitus involved in trauma."

Source: JAMA/Archives Journals