Endocrine Abstracts

Objective: To determine the hypoglycaemia prevalence in an old-patient hospitalized and to stablish the factors associated with its appearance and to study the association between the hypoglycaemia with the stay in hospital and the mortality during the hospitalization.

Material and method: A retrospective study in which all patients, older than 65 years old that were hospitalized during 2014 and at least two glycemic control have been realised, were included. By the revising of the computerise-clinic-history, sociodemographic, clinic and administrative data were obtained. The degree of comorbidity (Charlson index) was calculated which classified it in three levels: absence, moderate and high. The results of the glycaemic were obtained from electronic devices.

Results: 1924 patients were included, 51,0% were men. The average age was 78,8±7,9 years old. The 86,8% of the patients were urgent hospitalized and the 74,1% of the patients were hospitalized in medical services. The main diagnoses when they were hospitalized were related with breathing system (23,0%), circulatory system (19,4%) and the central nervous system (11,2%) diseases. The Charlson index was 5,6±3,6, showing up the 98,4% a high comorbidity. The 8,7% of the patients presented at least one hypoglycaemia episode during the hospitalization, of which the 26,3% presented more than two hypoglycaemia episodes during their hospitalization.The factors associated to the appearance of any hypoglycaemia episode were the hemiplegia (OR:1,7[IC95%:1,0–2,9]), and the chronic kidney disease (OR:1,2[IC95%:1,0–1,4]. The patients hospitalised in medical services had also more hypoglycaemia risk than the ones hospitalized in surgery services. (OR:1,5[IC95%:1,1–1,4]. The median stay was 11,1 days (range: 3–107), without finding differences between patients with and without hypoglycaemia (12,1±10,9 versus 11,0±10,4 days; P=0,181).As for overall mortality was 7.3%, and no differences between the group of patients with / without hypoglycemia were found (4.2% vs 7.6%; P=0.108).

Conclusions: The hypoglycaemia episodes in elderly patients were low comparing it to the other studies and they were associated with chronic diseases such as the renal disease and the hemiplegia.Contrary to what you would expect, hypoglycemic episodes were not related to mortality or hospital stay.