Impact of screening and monitoring of capillary blood glucose in the detection of hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia in non-critical inpatients.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of screening hyper and hypoglycemia measured by capillary glycemia and standard monitorization of hyperglycemic patients hospitalized in regular care units of Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein.

METHODS: The capillary glycemia was measured by the Precision PCx (Abbott) glucosimeter, using the PrecisionWeb (Abbott) software. The detection of hyper and hypoglycemia during the months of May/June were compared to those of March/April in 2009 and to the frequency of the diagnosis of diabetes in 2007.

RESULTS: There was an increase in the glycemia screening from 27.7 to 77.5% of hospitalized patients (p < 0.001), of hyperglycemia detection (from 9.3 to 12.2%; p < 0.001) and of hypoglycemia (from 1.5 to 3.3%; p < 0.001) during the months of May/June 2009. According to this action 14 patients for each additional case of hyperglycemia and 26 cases for each case of hypoglycemia were identified. The detection of hyperglycemia was significantly higher (p < 0.001) than the frequency of registered diagnosis related do diabetes in the year of 2007.

CONCLUSIONS: the adoption of an institutional program of glycemia monitorization improves the detection of hyper and hypoglycemia and glycemia control in hospitalized patients in regular care units.