Article Text
Summary
Hypoglycaemic encephalopathy is a feared complication in the management of patients with diabetes mellitus. We report on a 73-year-old woman with type 1 diabetes managed with an insulin pump who presented unresponsive after an inappropriate insulin bolus. The patient had minimal improvement in her neurological status over 8 days. After administration of 1 g intravenous methylprednisolone, she had dramatic neurological improvement including successful extubation and discharge from the intensive care unit. Steroid responsive encephalopathy is increasingly recognised in practice and literature. However, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first case of hypoglycaemic encephalopathy that responded to high-dose steroids.
- diabetes
- neurological injury
- neurology (drugs and medicines)
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Footnotes
Contributors All authors have seen and approve of the manuscript submitted and contributed greatly to it. Contributions are listed with specific authors that contributed. Conception and design of case report and manuscript, acquisition of data, analysis and/or interpretation of data, drafting the manuscript, revising the manuscript critically for important intellectual content, approval of the version of the manuscript to be published: all authors.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent Obtained.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.