Tripple bypass and Diabetes

Heart bypass surgery, also called coronary artery bypass surgery is a surgical procedure performed to relieve pain and reduce the risk of death from coronary artery (heart) disease.

The facts associated with the difficulties a diabetic patient may face if he or she has to go through heart surgery has been well recorded. However, the consequences of normal sugar diet for otherwise healthy person who has undergone bypass surgery due to cholesterol related problems have not gained much attention. 

10 % of nondiabetic patients have raised levels due to pre-surgery stress. (1) Almost 50% of all heart surgery patients may experience elevated blood glucose levels postoperatively, even if they have never had diabetes. (2)

Most heart and blood vessel surgery patients undergo blood glucose monitoring while in the operating room, with many patients receiving doses of insulin during their procedure. However, high blood glucose levels in nondiabetic patients after surgery had not been fully examined in the literature, prompting a research study.

Recently the University of Michigan Health System studied an intensive insulin protocol in monitoring and treating heart and vascular surgery patients who demonstrate elevated blood glucose levels postoperatively but did not examine whether these patients later developed true diabetes or prediabetes.

The new study is planned to recruit patients before their operations, have a longer follow-up interval, and include more rigorous testing of preoperative and post hospitalization blood glucose levels.

However, in the mean time, a nondiabetic patient who undergoes a surgical procedure must be aware that there is a possibility that he or she could become type 2 diabetic, if not closely monitored and treated carefully for blood glucose levels within the following three years.

(1) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061015213650.htm

(2)          http://professional.diabetes.org/Abstracts_Display.aspx?TYP=1&CID=69833