Has anyone come across this idea?

I am in dispute with a hospital as a result of my T1 husband’s treatment last Autumn. [This is the UK and the NHS and they do like to cover their backs!!!]
In the letter I have, which is meant to be the result of their enquiries, they stwate that 0.9% saline solution will lower blood glucose without insulin. Sounds flaky to me. It might work if the patient is severely dehydrated.
Hana

Was your husband in DKA at the time? Far more important for someone in DKA is to get their electrolyte balance straightened out and rehydration. Starting insulin for bg regulation can be done later. In fact some recent studies show that starting insulin immediately, acutely raises the risks of cerebral edema, the number one cause of death from DKA.

Google terms :DKA and cerebral edema.

I agree with this. I’ve been in DKA and when I went in I wasn’t started on an insulin drip for about 4-6 hours. They were just pumping me with fluids. Just doing that dropped my BG from the 700s to the 500s, with no insulin.

My husband was NOT in DKA at the time. He was being treated for an infection and not for a specifically diabetic problem. The outcome of hie treatment wqas to put his already high bg up even higher, when it was totally unnecessary. I queried the drips he was on and that’s what the nurse told me. When i asked her to explain the mechanism by which this should work, she just walked away. In fact he was on an insulin pump at the time and every time his bg dropped into single figures, he was given glucose. This is just part of the hospital’s attempts at pulling the wool over our eyes. My husband won’t complain, because he believes that nothing will come of it… Me, I’m a fighter.
Hana
PS before they kill someone!

Oh, wow… this hospital sounds, well,…STUPID.

Complain, and do it loudly!

I am doing so. they’ve “investigated” my initial complaint. Their answer is the saline thing. and I’ve very politely told them they are trying to whitewash their mistakes and blame the patient for the initial infection[which was their fault}
the UK isn’t as litigious as the US, so we don’t have many “big guns”. I’m planning on going to the diabetes UK Advocacy service. I did check the saline solution thing with their careline and ot a "equivocal"answer.
Hana

Maybe if you were really dehydrated, your blood’s chemistry could perhaps be ‘off’, if it were missing water, and result in some sort of inaccuracy in a readng, which could be corrected by getting hydrated? I would think you’d do ok drinking water or maybe some sort of low carb electrolyte sports drink kind of thing.

Well, they didn’t want to kill him by sending him hypo either.

I had a dentist a long time ago, use the phrase “better sweet than sorry” when it came to bg regulation in oral surgery or in a hospital. This is a little old-fashioned but not by much. It’s only very very recently that bg control in the hospital to “normal” bg levels, and not “hypo safe” bg levels, became a popular idea.

At least the hospital seems to have been checking his bg regularly and actively even if we don’t in detail agree with their bg regulation goal numbers. And their policy seems to have been to cover their ■■■, and not let him go hypo, and I can’t really blame them for that.

The lowest BG recorded during the period in question was 8.7mmol/l [156.6mg/dl] Not a big hypo risk I would think! Especially in a diabetic who maintains his BG in the 6s[[about 110] most of the time.
Hana
I have now written a STRONG, but perfectly polite letter.

FWIW, my T2 mother had heart surgery last year at age 75. Before surgery, her preprandial glucose was in the mid 80’s (about 4.7); after, with insulin drip, they kept it in the 160’s (mid 8’s). She’s normally on a combination oral (which I expect to be changed because Avandia is being taken off the market). IIRC her presurgical postprandials in the hospital were in the 140-160 range (7.8 - 8.9), but she eats very little and apparently the only palatable stuff on the hospital meal were white carbs. (Then again, most hospital food is unpalatable.)