Support Tool Reduces Hypoglycemia Risk in Type 2 Diabetes

TOPLINE:

Use of a novel clinical-decision support tool and shared decision making in elderly patients with type 2 diabetes managed in a primary care practice and at high risk for hypoglycemic episodes led to a 46% decrease in the number of at-risk patients and discontinuation of hypoglycemic agents in 20% in a prospective, 6-month, single-arm study with 94 patients.

METHODOLOGY:

The HypoPrevent study enrolled 94 people from a Pennsylvania primary care practice who were at least 65 years old with type 2 diabetes and at risk for hypoglycemia because of treatment with insulin or sulfonylureas, and having a hemoglobin A1c of less than 7.0%.
Clinicians and patients used a newly devised hypoglycemia reduction clinical-decision support tool developed by the Endocrine Society and a healthcare consulting company to help guide shared decision making for a goal A1c level, potential changes to treatment, and other steps to reduce the risk of hypoglycemia.
Primary outcomes during 6-month follow-up were impact of the intervention on A1c, changes in use of insulin or sulfonylureas, change in the number of study patients at risk for hypoglycemia, and impact on the incidence of nonsevere hypoglycemic events (NSHEs) measured with the Treatment-Related Impact Measure—Non-severe Hypoglycemic Events (TRIM-HYPO) survey.

TAKEAWAY:

Patients averaged 74 years old, 57% were women, 95% were White, 61% had diabetes for more than 10 years, 48% had chronic kidney disease, 51% were on insulin, 47% on a sulfonylurea, and 80 of the 94 enrolled patients completed all three study visits.
Nineteen patients (20%) reduced their dose of or discontinued insulin or sulfonylurea.
In patients with both baseline and follow-up A1 measures, A1c rose from 6.29% at baseline to 6.82%.
Fifty patients set an A1c goal and had a timely follow-up A1c measurement, and in this subgroup the number of patients at risk for hypoglycemia decreased by 46%, a significant change.
Patients who reported at least one NSHE at baseline had a significant reduction between the baseline survey and follow-up visits in both the total score as well as each of the five scored domains.

IN PRACTICE :

The HypoPrevent study results "show the potential of a decision support tool and shared decision making to reduce the risk of hypoglycemia in older persons with type 2 diabetes," and that "the tested decision tool can be effectively used by a busy primary care practice with positive results," concluded the researchers in their report.

SOURCE:

The HypoPrevent study was funded and organized by the Endocrine Society in collaboration with a multicenter team of researchers. The report appeared in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

LIMITATIONS:

Lack of a control group makes it impossible to conclusively determine whether the intervention led to the observed increases in A1c levels, nor can the study exclude regression to the mean as the cause for lowered A1c levels.

DISCLOSURES:

The study received funding from Abbott, Lilly, Merck, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi. Two co-authors had individual disclosures listed in the report; the other six co-authors had no disclosures.

Mitchel L. Zoler is a reporter with Medscape and MDedge based in the Philadelphia region. @mitchelzoler.

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