San Diego, Calif. (AACC/ASCLS Annual Meetings)—July 18, 2007—Critically ill hospital inpatients treated with tight glycemic control protocols experience lower mortality and comorbidity rates than those treated with conventional protocols, according to the findings of the Fourth Annual Tight Glycemic Control Adoption Report, conducted and issued today by LifeScan, a Johnson & Johnson company. The report notes that new data not only shows improved outcomes four years post-hospitalization for patients who were treated with tight glycemic control protocols in the ICU, but also that the outcomes are encouraging hospitals to expand the practice outside critical-care units to step-down units, emergency rooms and, for some, hospital-wide.

"For tight glycemic control champions within the hospital, this report can be a very valuable resource to help energize the wide adoption of tight glycemic control protocols," said Robert A. Gabbay, M.D., Ph.D., executive director, Penn State Diabetes and Obesity Institute, and associate professor of medicine, Penn State College of Medicine. He goes on to describe one study in the report, which showed an 18 percent reduction in four-year post-hospitalization mortality rates in patients treated with tight glycemic control protocols with at least a three-day ICU stay. In comparison, another group treated for at least five days in the ICU saw a 47 percent reduction in four-year post-hospitalization rates. "This report," Dr. Gabbay states, "is critical in helping to disseminate these and other important studies outside of academia."

The University Hospital Gasthuisberg in Leuven, Belgium, tracked 970 cardiac surgery patients who had been part of a larger trial focused on intensive insulin treatment in the ICU. Of the 941 with available data, 477 were given conventional insulin treatment while the remainder was treated according to a glycemic control protocol.

The four-year follow-up revealed that, among those who had spent at least three days in the ICU, 89 deaths were reported in patients who received conventional treatment compared with 73 deaths in those treated with tight glycemic control, suggesting a trend toward lower mortality in the latter group.

In patients with ICU stays at least five days, the findings favoring tight glycemic control protocols were even stronger, with 25 deaths reported among those treated with tight glycemic control as compared to 47 deaths in those treated conventionally (P=0.03).

The Fourth Annual Tight Glycemic Control Adoption Report also includes results from a national survey of LifeScan customers that use tight glycemic control protocols. Last year's report noted more than 377 hospitals using such protocols. Since then, 46 additional hospitals have reported implementing a tight glycemic control program. And this year, 17 hospitals report an expansion of the protocol hospital-wide. Fifty-two percent use their own internally developed protocol.

"The expansion of tight glycemic control implementation hospital-wide is extremely encouraging," said Glenn Johnson, vice president, LifeScan Strategic Customer Group (SCG) and Advanced Care Group. "This latest longitudinal data will provide further impetus to implement tight glycemic control protocols institution-wide, which we expect will ultimately benefit many patients."
For customers that implement tight glycemic control protocols, LifeScan works to ensure that these institutions have the research and support they need throughout the implementation, expansion and analysis of their program.

A majority of the articles published in the past 12 months originated outside the U.S, as tight glycemic control protocols also continue to expand internationally.

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