icon-nav-help
Need Help

Submit your question to our team of health care professionals.

icon-nav-current-questions
Current Question

See what's on the mind of the community right now.

icon-conf-speakers-at-a-glance
Meet the Team

Learn more about our world-renowned team.

icon-nav-archives
CWD Answers Archives

Review the entire archive according to the date it was posted.

CWD_Answers_Icon
November 9, 2005

Diagnosis and Symptoms

advertisement
Question from Rayville, Louisiana, USA:

A diabetes specialist says that, based on his glucose tolerance test, my son does not have diabetes. But, our family doctor says he does have it. What am I to believe? What do I do if the doctor will not provide diabetes testing supplies so I can check my son’s blood sugar? My son is 10, had a blood sugar of 135 mg/dl [7.5 mmol/L], and an A1c of 6.5.

Answer:

From: DTeam Staff

This sounds more than frustrating!

By DEFINITION, diabetes is present when one of the following three things has been documented:

A confirmed (at least twice) FASTING serum glucose (from a vein and analyzed in the hospital laboratory, not by a bedside glucose meter) is more than 125 mg/dL [6.9 mmol/L] OR;

A RANDOM serum glucose (from a vein and analyzed in the hospital laboratory, not by a bedside glucose meter) is more than 200 mg/dL [11.1 mmol/L] BUT THE PATIENT ALSO HAS SYMPTOMS of diabetes (such as increased urination, increased thirst, etc) OR;

If the serum glucose (from a vein and analyzed in the hospital laboratory, not by a bedside glucose meter) at the two hour point in a properly performed Oral Glucose Tolerance Test is more than 200 mg/dL [11.1 mmol/L].

Please see Classification and Diagnosis of Diabetes and information on the basics of a Glucose Tolerance Test.

So, my bias, given what you have said, is that if the diabetes SPECIALIST says that the patient does not (yet) have diabetes, then the patient likely does not have diabetes. Might the child be at risk? Might he have “pre-diabetes?” These are questions to ask the specialist. I hope you the diabetes specialist is a pediatric endocrinologist. If not, ask your family doctor for a referral.

DS