Special attention to your diabetes management is required if you are preparing to undergo surgery. Both anesthesia and the stress of an operation can cause increased blood glucose levels. To further complicate matters, most surgeries require fasting starting the night before the operation, which also alters your blood glucose levels.
Poorly controlled blood glucose around the time of surgery can increase your risk for post-operative infections, and can impair wound healing. To best avoid these complications, you should work with your physicians to maintain glucose levels in the 100-250 range.
In most cases, patients using oral diabetic medications with well-controlled diabetes should continue them until the day before the operation. Depending on your needs, you may be started on intravenous dextrose (glucose) and may be given insulin injections starting either the day before surgery, or the morning of. Your blood and urine glucose levels will be checked regularly before, during, and after the operation, and the dextrose and insulin given will be adjusted accordingly. Your internist, surgeon, or anesthesiologist will instruct you as to what your pre- and post-operative medication regimen should be.
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