A recent study showed that mild to moderate low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) may cause death to patients who are critically ill.

The study included all patients at ICU from six medical centers in Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Of those patients, 1,109 patients have hypoglycemia while the remaining are under the non-hypoglycemic group.

The study has discovered that a death rate of 36.6 percent has been found for those patients with hypoglycemia, compared to 19.7 percent to those without the disease.

It has been believed before that hypoglycemia is clinically unimportant, but now scientists and doctors are taking focus on its effects to their ICU patients.

Dr. Rinaldo Bellomo of Austin Heath in Melbourne and co-investigator of the study has stated in a news release that the more sever hypoglycemia is, the greater the risk of death.

Any tolerance of mild to moderate hypoglycemia by intensive care clinicians is disagreeable. Because of this, latest technologies such as continuous monitoring of glucose levels in the ICU setting must be set-up to avoid hypoglycemia or be able detect it earlier. Bellomo said.

Australia Japan Medicine