Intensive Insulin in Intensive Care

Abstract

Among the critically ill, elevations in blood glucose, a marker previously ignored or described as adaptive, became a major therapeutic target after a 2001 study indicated a mortality benefit of intensive insulin therapy among patients in a surgical intensive care unit (ICU).¹ Concern has arisen about that study because of the relatively high mortality in relation to the severity of illness among patients in the control group; the frequent administration of parenteral calories to critically ill patients, a practice that is uncommon at other centers; a preponderance of patients who had cardiac surgery in the single center where the study . . .