October 28, 1999
Hypoglycemia
Question from Islamabad, Pakistan:
My daughter is 2 months old and is suffering from persistent hypoglycemia. Kindly provide me the details regarding treatment.
Answer:
At 2 months of age, your daughter is really beyond the neonatal period and although the administration of extra glucose enterally [by mouth] or parenterally [not by mouth] may still be needed to prevent hypoglycemia, future management is going to depend on arriving at an exact diagnosis, hyperinsulinism for example. This can be a complicated business which has to be guided by a paediatrician with special experience of this age group. You could learn quite a lot about the problem if you could get to a medical school library to look at a paediatric textbook. you might also be helped by searching under ‘neonatal hypoglycemia’ in PubMed although the technical language might be confusing.
I hope this at least starts you on the road to a more detailed understanding of a sometimes complicated problem.
DOB