Your squad is responding as a first-tier basic life support unit to an ill patient with diabetes. You mention to your partner, “It seems like every patient we see has diabetes.”
Despite a wide variety of presenting complaints, diabetes is often a component of a patient’s medical history. Over time, diabetes affects every body systemheart, blood vessels, eyes, and kidneys. There is a very strong relationship between poor glucose control and blindness, cardiovascular disease, and amputations.
The American Diabetes Association estimates that more than 1.5 million new cases of diabetes will be diagnosed this year.1 Adding to the 14.6 million already diagnosed, 6.2 million undiagnosed, and some 54 million prediabetic patients, diabetes is one of the fastest growing health concerns Americans face.2 With obesity running rampant and a less active younger population, many public health experts warn of an impending diabetes epidemic. Our American youth tend to forsake the outdoors in favor of the indoors, playing video and computer games instead of running around playing tag, riding bikes, and getting exercise. Two million adolescents between the ages of 12 and 19 (which equates to one in six) are obese and are prediabetic. (1) Their diet also comes into play: Fast food and quick, overprocessed meals are implicated in the rapid rise in diabetes cases.3
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