Afrezza in the Emergency Room Hyperglycemia

[frumenti]

I came across an very interesting article in a prestigious medical science journal. The article was titled
"Fatal Metformin Overdose Presenting with Progressive Hyperglycemia". Here is a an excerpt from
the article"We report the case of an intentional overdose of metformin in a patient without diabetes
which resulted in progressive hyperglycemia early in the clinical course and fatal lactic acidosis.
This patient’s peak serum glucose level of 707 mg/dL is the highest reported in a case of Metformin toxicity"
The process of treating Metformin overdose cases is very slow from the description given in the paper. My granddaughter is a nurse in ER
in Oregon. She described to me the process for treatment of common hyperglycemia and that process is also very slow and complicated.

I am not trained in medicine but it seems to me Afrezza could be used to treat both cases because of the amazing speed
it has of getting into the system. Treatment of common hyperglycemia they get in ER all the time, appears to me to be a slam dunk.
Metformin overdose is described as causing hyperglycemia and glucose level of 707 mg/dl seems to me to demand Afrezza to slow/stop progression
of the overdose. Only a Doctor can address this idea. Continuing the thought, why wouldn't all diabetics want to have in their
possession a very fast acting insulin just as a safety measure? 

Link: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672258/?report=reader

[liane]

frumenti,

I don't see a large role for Afrezza for hyperglycemia severe enough to warrant an ER visit (DKA and HHS). First off, severe hyperglycemia involves several metabolic imbalances, not just blood sugar. These are hypovolemia, acidemia, and electrolyte imbalances. You have to be very careful how quickly you tackle all of these. And secondly, a patient in the ER or the ICU, is going to have IV access, and insulin can be given and finely tuned by that route.

[tripoley]

May 31, 2015 16:07:05 GMT -5 liane said:

frumenti,

I don't see a large role for Afrezza for hyperglycemia severe enough to warrant an ER visit (DKA and HHS). First off, severe hyperglycemia involves several metabolic imbalances, not just blood sugar. These are hypovolemia, acidemia, and electrolyte imbalances. You have to be very careful how quickly you tackle all of these. And secondly, a patient in the ER or the ICU, is going to have IV access, and insulin can be given and finely tuned by that route.

I concur...