A study of the prevalence of impaired awareness of hypoglycaemia in people who have had a severe hypoglycaemic emergency and been attended by the ambulance service

Abstract

Severe hypoglycaemia is a serious condition and accounts for 0.6%–1.0% of all UK emergency ambulance calls per annum. Our previous qualitative research suggested that many Diabetes related hypoglycaemia patients attended by the ambulance service experienced impaired awareness of hypoglycaemia (IAH), a treatable condition which reduces patients’ awareness of the signs and symptoms of an impending severe hypoglycaemic emergency. The prevalence of IAH among people with type 1 Diabetes is approximately 25%. In type 2 its prevalence is approximately 10%. However the prevalence of IAH in people who use the ambulance service due to a hypoglycaemic emergency was unknown. Our aim therefore was to investigate the prevalence of IAH in patients who require ambulance service attendance due to severe hypoglycaemia. https://emj.bmj.com/content/34/10/e7.1 This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/emermed-2017-207114.19