Point-of-Care Glucose Testing and Insulin Supplementation

Overview

Capillary point-of-care (POC) testing is advocated as a valuable aid in the management of diabetes and hyperglycemia in the hospital setting. POC testing aims at collecting information on BG levels at different time points during the day in order to assess glycemic control and to guide insulin adjustment/correction doses. Although POC testing provides insights into day-to-day excursions in BG levels, bedtime BG testing triggers the use of insulin supplements that may result in increased frequency of hypoglycemia and is expensive with an estimated annual cost in hospitals of several hundreds of millions of dollars in the U.S. Accordingly, this pilot study aims to assess the utility of POC and insulin supplementation (correction doses) at bedtime in improving glycemic control and in preventing hypoglycemia in non-ICU patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). A total of 250 non-ICU medical and surgical patients treated with basal bolus regimen will undergo POC testing before meals and bedtime (standard of care) and half of the patients will receive insulin correction doses at bedtime for BG \> 140 mg/dL following a sliding scale protocol, while the other half will be followed without insulin supplementation at bedtime except for extreme hyperglycemia (BG \> 350 mg/dl). Patients will be recruited at Emory University Hospital and Grady Memorial Hospital.

The value of POC testing and use of insulin supplements (correction doses) in particular at bedtime, has not been prospectively evaluated in insulin-treated patients with T2DM. In the non-ICU setting, practice guidelines for the management of hyperglycemia in patients with T2DM favor the use of physiologic (basal-nutritional-correction dose) insulin regimens over sliding scale regular insulin. POC testing is invasive and painful, and has the limitation of providing glycemic profile that is an incomplete picture of BG excursions and is not always an accurate method to monitor glucose compared to laboratory assays in addition to the major expense in health care delivery. The overall objective of this proposal is to conduct the first prospective randomized controlled trial (RCT) to determine the POC glucose testing and use of insulin supplementation at bedtime in improving glycemic control and in preventing hypoglycemia in insulin-treated non-ICU patients with T2DM. The central hypothesis of this proposal is that routine BG measurement and insulin supplementation at bedtime does not improve glycemic control or reduce frequency of hypoglycemia in insulin treated medicine and surgery patients with T2DM.