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The treatment of hypoglycaemias
is well known : give sugar. If the patient is unable to eat or drink,
often because of unconsciousness, an intramuscular injection of
glucagon should raise glycemia and restore
consciousness.
On the other hand the insulin dose necessary to
correct an unexpected hyperglycaemia
when diabetes is otherwise well controlled, is more difficult to
determine.
This emergency treatment aims at
lowering glycaemia to about 150 mg / dL, in two
hours.
The
following formula is proposed, where G
is the measured
(excessive) glycaemia and DD the usual total insulin daily
dosage. The number of units of rapid insulin to
inject is
equal to (G - 150) x (DD/1500).
For
instance, if the total daily dose of insulin is 45 u, and glycaemia is
500 mg /dl, a dose of 10.5 u of rapid insulin is
recommended.
The small program below does the calculation
for you.
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