The current status of treatment-related severe hypoglycemia in Japanese patients with diabetes mellitus: a report from the committee on a survey of severe hypoglycemia in the Japan Diabetes Society.

Despite great strides in pharmacotherapy for diabetes, there is increasing concern over the risk of hypoglycemia in patients with diabetes receiving pharmacotherapy as they become increasingly older. This has prompted the Japan Diabetes Society (JDS) to initiate a survey on the current status of severe hypoglycemia in clinical settings. In July 2015, following approval from the JDS Scientific Survey/Research Ethics Committee, the JDS extended an invitation to executive educators, who represented a total of 631 health-care facilities accredited by the JDS for diabetes education, to participate in the proposed survey. Of these, those who expressed their willingness to participate in the survey were sent an application form required for obtaining ethical approval at these health-care facilities and were then asked, following approval, to enter relevant clinical data on an unlinked, anonymous basis in a Web-based registry. The current survey was fully funded by the JDS Scientific Survey/Research Committee. A case registry (clinical case database) was launched after facility-specific information (healthcare facility database) was collected from all participating facilities and after informed consent was obtained from all participating patients. With severe hypoglycemia defined as the "presence of hypoglycemic symptoms requiring assistance from another person to treat and preferably venous plasma glucose levels at onset/diagnosis of disease or at presentation clearly less than 60 mg/dL (capillary whole blood glucose, less than 50 mg/dL)", the current survey was conducted between April 1, 2014 and March 31, 2015, during which facility-specific information was collected from a total of 193 facilities with a total of 798 case reports collected from 113 facilities. Of the 193 respondent facilities, 149 reported having an emergency department as well, with the median number of patients who required emergency transportation services to reach these facilities totaling 4962 annually, of which those with severe hypoglycemia accounted for 0.34% (17). The respondent facilities accommodated a total of 2237 patients with severe hypoglycemia annually, with the number of patients thus accommodated being 6.5 patients per site. A total of 1171 patients were admitted for severe hypoglycemia, with the number of patients thus admitted being 4.0 per site, who accounted for 52.3% of all patients visiting annually for severe hypoglycemia. A review of the 798 case reports collected during the survey revealed that 240, 480, and 78 patients had type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, and other types of diabetes, respectively; those with type 2 diabetes were shown to be significantly older [median (interquartile range), 77.0 (68.0-83.0)] than those with type 1 diabetes [54.0 (41.0-67.0)] (