Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction and objectives: Hyperglycemia (HG) is a common problem in hospitalized patients that increases infections, mortality, costs and the hospital stay. The objective of this study is to know the association of the HG with cardiovascular risk factors (CVRF), stress factors, hospital stay and mortality.

Methods: We designed a cross-sectional observational study. We included patients admitted in the hospital every three days in two months. We excluded patients younger than 15 years, stays less than three days and those of the pediatric, gynecological, emergency and intensive care services. We collected the data from these patients the third day of admission and at discharge. We defined HG as two or more capillary glucose values greater than 140 mg/dl. We consider stress factors as infection/sepsis, surgery and corticosteroids treatment.

Results: A total of 328 patients were included 109 of patients had HG. Regarding CVRF, the hyperglycemic patients had hypertension in 67%, dyslipidemia in 45.9% and both disorders in 38.5%; compared to 42.9%, 24.7% and 17.8%, respectively in non-hyperglycemic patients. The HG group had two stress factors in 33.7% vs 8.4% in non-HG group; and three stress factors in 10.6% vs 3.6% respectively. Hyperglycemic patients were treated with corticosteroids in 36.7% vs 15.6% in non-hyperglycemic patients. The mean hospital stay was 9.17 days in HG group compared with 7.53 days in non-HG group (P<0.52). Longer stays were observed in HG group. Finally, the rate of mortality in hyperglucemic patients was of 3.7%, vs 0.5% of the non-hyperglycemic patients (P<0.044).

Conclusions: Patients with hospital HG are more likely to have other CVRF associated. Stress factors such as surgery, corticosteroids treatment and infection/sepsis increase the risk of HG. Finally HG is associated with a longer hospital stay and higher mortality.