You may have heard that diabetics face a greater risk of complications during hospital stays. Well, now there's evidence that diabetics with trauma injuries are particularly at risk. That info comes courtesy of a large Pennsylvania study that looked at records for around 25,000 trauma patients, half with diabetes, the other half without. The study tracked the patients' progress over the course of almost twenty years. Impressive.

What did they find? Twenty-three percent of the diabetic trauma patients experienced complications. That compares with only fourteen percent of non-diabetics. The diabetics also spent slightly more time in intensive care and were more likely to need ventilator support. The overall risk of infections was higher too - eleven percent versus six percent.

Good news: despite all this, the data did not suggest people with diabetes are more likely to die after a trauma injury. Nor did it suggest diabetics stay in hospital longer than non-diabetics. The team that conducted the study states that the next step would be to examine whether or not improved blood sugar control in diabetic trauma patients would impact these figures.

Read more about these findings by visiting MedPageToday or, for a brief summary, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Or check out the full report, published in Archives of Surgery (July, 2007).

It is frequently said that the number-one diabetes-related problem (okay, at least top five) is underdiagnosis. A great many people (six million, at last estimate)  with the disease have no idea, but as the old saying goes, ignorance is not bliss. Here's just one example of why that's the case: a new study shows that if you should become critically ill for whatever reason, having high blood sugar increases your chance of death.

What's scary about this report is that researchers found your blood sugar does not have to be sky high. They say that blood sugar even slightly higher than normal is enough to put you at risk for dying in hospital. Those at greatest risk are people recovering from heart attacks, strokes or other cardiovascular ailments.

The study was conducted through an analysis of 216,000 intensive-care patients. The results were announced at the ongoing American Diabetes Association meeting in Washington. Intensive care patients need to have their blood sugar monitored carefully, say the researchers.