That the American Diabetes Association
(ADA) and The Endocrine Society would undertake this project says
that hypoglycemia has been of greater concern by doctors lately.
Five members from each organization were called together by the
Chair, who is a member of both. A planning conference call was held
before a two-day meeting at which staff from both organizations
attended. The writing group used data from recent clinical trials
and studies to update a prior work group report. Some conclusions
were developed from expert opinion.
The new report reviews the impact of
hypoglycemia on patients with diabetes and provides guidance about
using this information in clinical practice. Because this was
developed for clinical practice, I will not approach that side of it.
As a patient, I have many reservations and concerns about the
definitions and lack of understanding for patients to help them
determine the severity of a hypoglycemic episode. This is where I
feel the professionals are writing only for each other, and not to
assist patients or to help educate patients. This lack of concern
for education of patients is probably why I become upset. If, only
if, they had taken some extra time to have expanded some areas, and
include more information about hypoglycemia in the report, they could
have also provided some excellent advice and guidance for patients.
Believe it or not, many of us do learn.
The information is contained in PDF
files and three can be found in this article. This link will take
you to the Diabetes Care site as part of ADA where you can click on
the Full Text (PDF) and download and read the data and background.
The same link also has a slide set which you will need to click on
and this will take you to a second page where again you will need to
click on Slide Set which will open a window on screen to
download a Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation (1.3 MB). The image
below (slide 5) in about the consensus process and process of finally
bringing it to publishing where we are able to read it. I felt this
could be interesting. What is disappointing is that it is only nine
slides in length.