In addition, patients may receive a correctional or rapid-acting pre-meal insulin dose for unanticipated hyperglycemia. Patients initiated on basal-bolus therapy are given a long-acting insulin either once or twice a day and nutritional or rapid-acting insulin before meals. 1 Another method that more closely mimics the body’s physiological insulin secretions is basal-bolus insulin therapy.
A variety of methods are available to regulate hospitalized patients’ glucose levels and prevent the adverse events associated with hyperglycemia.Ī commonly used method to control glucose levels in institutional settings is sliding-scale insulin therapy, which is the administration of rapid-acting insulin 30 minutes before meals, based on the patient’s pre-meal glucose reading. To circumvent hyperglycemic complications in hospitalized patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, glucose levels are commonly controlled with insulin in the inpatient setting. Hyperglycemia is a common condition in hospitalized patients whose glucose levels are normally controlled with oral antidiabetic medications, which are often discontinued upon admission.
By: Maria Sedky Saad (PharmD Candidate c/o 2021), Shivani Shah (PharmD Candidate c/o 2021)
