Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Episodes of poorly controlled diabetes (DM) are one of the most frequent medical complications during hospitalization in the elderly population.

Goals: To analyze the mortality rate (M) in patients with DM who undergo some medical decompensation during an admission to Orthopedic Surgery and Traumatology (OST).

Material and methods: Descriptive analysis of patients admitted to OST who suffered some type of medical decompensation that needed to notify an team of Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Cardiology. We analyze the patients with known DM and their M.

Results: From June 2008 to December 2014, 1486 consultations were sent to Internal Medicine, Cardiology, Nephrology and Endocrinology regarding patients admitted to the OST area who had undergone some type of medical decompensation during admission. Of these patients, 437 (29.4%) had a documented history of DM. Their M was 11.21% (49 patients), with the M of the decompensated 10.3%.

Conclusions: DM is a cause of medical decompensation in 8.3% of patients admitted to OST. One in four known diabetics had abnormal blood glucose levels. Patients with a history of DM, decompensated or not, present a slightly higher M than the global number of decompensated patients in this area. We suggest that an early evaluation of blood glucose levels by Cardiology, Nephrology, Endocrinology or Internal Medicine could be beneficial in terms of morbidity and mortality.