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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care.
Question from a client who says my brother has been in intensive care for 47 days now, and his blood sugar has been very high for the last few weeks, even though he’s not diabetic. Is that because they’re giving him a glucose infusion? What a great question. And let me elaborate on this.
If your brother is not diabetic, but he has high blood sugars and he’s getting a glucose or a dextrose infusion, that doesn’t mean he’s diabetic at all. It just means the body is going through a stress response. So there’s enough research out there when patients are in intensive care, whether they are diabetic or not, they end up with high blood sugars. And many patients in ICU end up with an insulin infusion at least temporarily.
Can you imagine being in ICU, critically ill, your body is going through massive stress. And because of that massive stress, the body produces more sugar and that needs to be managed with insulin. So it’s a normal response. Most patients go back to normal without high sugars, even at the end of their intensive care stay. So you shouldn’t be too concerned about it. It definitely needs to be monitor for sure. And that’s what the intensive care team is doing anyway. They’re managing it with insulin.
That is my quick tip for today.
This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com.
If you have a loved one in intensive care, go to intensivecarehotline.com, call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, or send us an email to [email protected].
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Take care for now.