A 65 year old patient with COPD sees his primary care provider for worsening shortness of breath over the past week. His current medications include tiotropium and albuterol. He has no other significant past medical history but has a family history of diabetes. His current labs include a fasting plasma glucose of 96 mg/dL, HbA1c of 6.1%, Scr = 0.8 mg/dL. His primary care provider determines that the patient is having a COPD exacerbation and is opting to initiate a 5 day course of prednisone 40 mg orally daily (click here for more on a 5 days course versus longer steroid courses for COPD exacerbations). What are some of the risk factors, the time-course, and the mechanism for developing hyperglycemia in a situation like this?
HughesMedicine - Pharmacotherapy Pearls from the Internal Medicine Clinical Pharmacist
Sunday, April 12, 2015
Recommended for you
-
Let’s start with a patient case. A patient is being treated with methylprednisolone 20 mg IV q6 hours for some inflammatory process and...
-
Since it's the time of year again when Lyme disease is a concern for patients in many parts of the United States, I thought it would b...
-
The American Geriatrics Society recently published their Alternative Treatments to Selected Medications in reference to the most recent upd...
-
Thiamine is a water-soluble vitamin that is an important coenzyme for various metabolic processes in the body. These include the regulat...
-
Ticagrelor is an antiplatelet medication that is commonly used for a number of cardiovascular conditions. Its mechanism is similar to th...
-
Testing urine for the presence of drugs has a variety of uses including assessing poisoning or overdose, pre-employment testing, substanc...
-
Heparin and low molecular weight heparins (LMWH) are some of the many medications that have been identified to cause hyperkalemia. When l...
-
Thrombocytopenia is a notable adverse effect of linezolid. Some of the evidence behind the onset, duration, and the extent of platelet de...
-
A 65 year old male is being treated for an infection on his forearm that developed purulent drainage within the last few days. He denies ...
-
Let's start with a patient case. A 70 year old male patient is admitted to the hospital for a diabetic foot infection. He has a past...
