April 18, 2004
Insulin
Question from Georgia, USA:
General correction dose guidelines: one doctor said he uses the rule of 1800 for children, another doctor, on this forum, states he uses weight to determine this. In working with a group of children, ages 6-18 who have limited knowledge of corrections, are there some general guidelines? Frequent self monitoring of blood glucose will be done. I recently saw blood glucose corrections in-between-meals using Regular. This seems pretty risky to me.
Answer:
All diabetes care including insulin dosing is self-determined by blood glucose monitoring. There are general guidelines, such as one unit to correct 50 mg/dl [2.8 mmol/L] blood glucose measurements for adults and adolescents, tapered down for younger children and modified by weight, insulin sensitivity, overall insulin doses and total insulin requirements. For infants and preschoolers, 1:100 or even 1:150 sometimes works just fine. No dogma and always modified by learning with the use of blood glucose monitoring pre- and post-prandially.
SB