OmniPod settings during surgery

[RLS1]

I am heading into clavicle surgery on Tuesday afternoon and they have said I may wear my OmniPod as long as it is a fasting basal. So I am trying that out today along with my Dexcom G6 monitoring BG.
Wondering if any of you have experience, and best practices/lessons learned, with these technologies during surgery and afterward?

[Marie20]

Hopefully this helps some.

Surgery and Insulin use

I decided to start this as a lot of people ended up talking about having surgery and insulin dosing on a different subject blog. I have to assume that there are a lot of people out there that would love other peoples experiences so they have a better idea of how to handle it. It was very frustrating and scary when I had surgery a few years ago trying to figure out what I needed. I was on Lantus once a day and Humalog as needed. For the first outpatient surgery it was going to be a short surgery…

[The_Burn]

When I had surgery in January, my Endo and I worked out settings. We did a 50% basal rate, which lasted throughout my 6-ish hour surgery and modified both my ISF and carb ratio. My surgery was GI-related, so these settings stayed until my diet was advanced a couple of days later.

[SheilaW]

I’ve had a number of surgeries in recent years - gall stones, appendix removal, lumpectomy, etc… The most important lesson that I learned was to develop a plan with my endo and then to have the endo post the plan to my hospital chart. For planned surgeries, even though everything was discussed and agreed upon prior to the surgery, on the day of the surgery some medical person would want me to take my pump off. Being able to say “please see my endo’s instructions in my chart” always seemed to work very well. Before doing this, surgeries would always be stressful continuously having to tell medical personnel that yes, I did plan to keep my pump on during the surgery.

[RLS1]

Thanks to all for your experiential guidance! Fortunately my anesthesiologist and Ortho doctor understood m OmniPod and Dexcom and listened to my recommendations. A few of the nurses were quite ignorant about Diabetes but overall I was very pleased with the hospital’s response. They may have given me a bit of dextrose 4 at a low point and my BG rose after I had a small dinner at home. Otherwise I am VERY pleased with setting the OmniPod on a practiced fasting routine and recommend it to all for shorter surgeries. Mine was 2.5 hours.

[JVG]

I have had two procedures requiring anesthesia (carpal tunnel and routine colonoscopy) and was allowed to keep my pump connected for both. I have Tandem t:slim. The first procedure I just had basal IQ and the second control IQ. I did not change any settings, just kept basal settings as they were. When I woke up, I was 120-130 both times. It was so much better than prior procedures.

[Timothy]

That’s good to hear, and it should be like that because when you aren’t eating your pump should stay flat.

My fear is that anesthesia or the trauma of the surgery will throw off my glucose so much that the pump can’t manage.

I assume someone is watching it tho.

[RLS1]

In my surgery the nurses used their own hospital blood tester to test my blood sugars and they recorded them in my surgery notations. I was very glad to see that and it showed my blood sugars were very stable. Thanks for everyone’s input on this important issue.

Thanks, Rob.