The Endocrine Society has issued an updated clinical practice guideline on the prevention and management of hypoglycemia in patients with diabetes who are at high risk, addressing the wide variety of treatment advances, such as insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) systems, that have appeared since the publication of the society’s last guideline on hypoglycemia, in 2009.
“CGM and insulin pumps have been much more commonly used in the last decade among people with diabetes, including children, and there are new forms of glucagon available,” said Anthony L. McCall, MD, PhD, chair of the panel that wrote the guideline.
“We had to update our guideline to match these developments in the diabetes field,” noted Dr. McCall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, in a press statement.
The new guideline, developed by a multidisciplinary panel of clinical experts and published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, addresses 10 key clinical questions regarding current issues relevant to hypoglycemia prevention and treatment in adult or pediatric patients with either type 1 or type 2 diabetes in the outpatient or inpatient setting.
Key guideline recommendations
The recommendations are based on factors including critical outcomes, implementation feasibility, and patient preferences.
Key guideline recommendations that are considered “strong,” based on evidence, include:
- The use of CGM rather than self-monitoring of blood glucose by fingerstick for patients with type 1 diabetes receiving multiple daily injections. The panel underscored that “comprehensive patient education on how to use and troubleshoot CGM devices and interpret these data is critically important for maximum benefit and successful outcomes.”
The use of a structured program for patient education versus unstructured advice for adult and pediatric outpatients with type 1 diabetes or type 2 diabetes receiving insulin therapy.
- Structured education on how to avoid repeated hypoglycemia is critical, and this education should be performed by experienced diabetes clinicians,” the panel asserts. “Moreover, insurance coverage for education should be available for all insulin-using patients.”
- The use of glucagon preparations that do not have to be reconstituted, as opposed to those that do (that is, available as a powder and diluent) in the treatment of outpatients with severe hypoglycemia.
Guideline recommendations that received conditional recommendations include:
- Use of real-time CGM and algorithm-driven insulin pumps in people with type 1 diabetes.
- Use of CGM for outpatients with type 2 diabetes at high risk for hypoglycemia.
- Use of long-acting and rapid-acting insulin analogs for patients at high risk for hypoglycemia.
Noting that there is “moderate-certainty” evidence for severe hypoglycemia reduction as an outcome in those using long-acting analog insulins versus human neutral protamine Hagedorn (NPH) insulin, the panel cautions that “most studies of long-acting analog insulins do not assess for significant adverse effects, including cardiovascular outcomes, and that many studies were designed to demonstrate noninferiority of analog insulin, compared with human NPH insulin.”
- Initiation of and continuation of CGM for select inpatient populations at high risk for hypoglycemia.