Talk:Hypoglycemia

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Infobox

The article has grown an infobox with a lot of ICD-9 codes. As hypoglycemia is not a disease but a symptom, is there any way to present this information? JFW | T@lk 6 July 2005 22:33 (UTC)

Except it is can be a chronic symptom, not just an acute symptom, I know personal history is not very useful, but if you had a patient like me with no detectable underlying issue but whose reading was always between 17 to 22 mg/dL when waking up in the morning and 55-60 mg/dL 2 hours after a full meal, how is that not a disorder? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gloern (talk • contribs) 01:03, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

user:arcadian put the info box there labeled leukemia. I changed it to hypoglycemia and added the icd9 codes covered by the article. I am not sure that it is a particularly informative box as it stands, but a long table of icd9 codes certainly doesn't belong at the top of the page either. Any suggestions? alteripse 6 July 2005 23:46 (UTC)

Conflicting information re: whipple's triad

The article here on hypoglycemia says that whipple's triad is used to diagnose hypoglycemia. However, the article on whipple's triad states that it is used to diagnose the cause of hypoglycemia as an insulinoma (an insulin-secreting tumor).

The triad as described in its article is fairly vague; symptoms of hypoglycaemia, low blood plasma glucose concentration, relief of symptoms when plasma glucose concentration increased.

The article on whipple's triad lists the differential diagnoses as hypoglycemia, which doesn't make sense. If hypoglycemia IS a symptom, how can it be a differential, too? It's also described as though it is a symptom, or group of related symptoms, not an actual condition with a diagnosis. So how can it have a differential in the first place? I could be wrong, but the article on whipple's triad seems like there might be some erroneous information.

I have yet to go through them extensively, but just at a glance it seems that the article on whipple's triad may be at fault here. But, I don't want to make any changes just based on a vague inference. If somebody more knowledgable in the topic could look into this more, it would be very much appreciated. VoidHalo (talk) 02:26, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

@VoidHalo Based off what research I've done it appears that Whipple’s triad was originally was meant to describe signs of hypoglycaemia due to insulinoma but has now kind of just turned into general criteria for hypoglycemia itself. I'm finding sources that use it as critria for hypoglycemia and for hypoglycaemia due to insulinoma but the original purpose of the criteria was specefic to identifying insulinomas. As for listing hypoglycemia as a differential diagnosis, I believe the purpose of that is to say that whipple's triad, while originally meant to identify insulinomas, also identifies hypoglycemia. Another bit that might be confusing is the usage of the terms "low blood sugar" vs "hypoglycemia". This is where it gets a bit messy but oftentimes people will have blood sugar levels that are below the normal range but not have any symptoms. Usually (but not always) the term hypoglycemia isn't used unless someone has both low blood sugar and is symptomatic. Also because the symptoms of hypoglycemia are nonspecefic (could be caused by other things) a persons symptoms improving with glucose further points to low blood sugar being the cause of their symptoms.

To sum things up Whipple’s triad was originally meant to identify hypoglycaemia due to insulinoma but is commonly used to identify symptomatic hypoglycemia meaning that both pages are correct in their own sense, just confusing. I hope that helps clarify things a bit. CursedWithTheAbilityToDoTheMath (talk) 04:11, 22 August 2024 (UTC)