Failure to achieve euglycemia despite aggressive insulin control signals abnormal physiologic response to trauma

A posttraumatic patient's response to tight glycemic control revealed important prognostic information about the patients' physiologic status. Patients who failed to reach euglycemia in the first 6 hours of admission had an increased hospital mortality. The time to normalization is significantly longer in those patients who died. Patients who did not correct rapidly required significantly higher insulin doses, suggesting insulin resistance.