Blood test and diabetes question?
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Exactly! If the patient is not considered diabetic but has a suspicion of a glucose impairment, they overload him or her with glucose to see if it is impaired. It has 75 grams of glucose (pretty as much as three glasses of artificial juice drank at once would)
If you suspect the patient is frankly diabetic, that test is not done to him, only fasting glucose control is requested.
The test is called a GTT (glucose tolerance test) And yes, if you have diabetes, the stuff you drink would be very very bad for you. However, if your blood sugar climbs past a certain point and they realize you are seriously diabetic, then they stop the test and give you meds, sometimes even insulin, to help your blood sugar back down. That is part of the reason they take so many samples, so they can monitor if the sugar drink starts to send you out of control.
The Glucose tolerance test is to determine (usually when you’re pre-diabetic) whether or not you have diabetes, and it is all based around the levels of your blood glucose over a period of time.
If someone had serious diabetes, then they wouldn’t need a GTT to diagnose it. They would have symptoms of hyperglycemia and a fasting test would be enough to diagnose.
Someone can have type 2 diabetes or glucose intolerance while still having a normal fasting glucose levels. A GTT allows the doctor to check for these conditions. It shouldn’t do any lasting harm; you need to have elevated levels over a period of time to cause any damage to organs, eyes etc and its more important to catch these things early so you can start to treat it.
This is a glucose tolerence test and the amount of sugar in it is closely controlled and the blood is tested frequently so if it went to high they would be able to treat it before it rose to high