New Guidelines for Doctors to Treat Diabetes

Dec 12, 2014
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A new set of "guiding principles" for the care of people with diabetes and those who are at risk for it has been issued from the NDEP with the endorsement from several medical societies…

A newly published set of 10 guiding principles highlights areas of agreement for diabetes care that could be clinically useful in diabetes management and prevention. Presented by the National Diabetes Education Program (NDEP), Guiding Principles for the Care of People With or at Risk for Diabetes is aimed at assisting with identification and management of the disease, self-management support for patients, physical activity and blood glucose control, among other topics. More than a dozen federal agencies and professional organizations support the document.

"There are a lot of diabetes guidelines out there, and practitioners and patients can get confused about which they should follow," said Judith Fradkin, M.D., director of the Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases in the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. "With these Guiding Principles, we aren’t creating new guidelines, but clarifying where there is general agreement across myriad diabetes guidelines. Guiding Principles represents a set of sound practices. Our goal in developing this resource is to help clinicians help their patients with diabetes."

"Guiding Principles is the result of a major collaborative effort from a varied group of experts who are committed to improving the care for people with or at risk for diabetes," said NIDDK Director Griffin P. Rodgers, M.D. "These principles represent the cornerstone of diabetes management and prevention."

Guiding Principles for the Care of People With or at Risk for Diabetes was produced by the federally funded National Diabetes Education Program (NDEP), co-sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Medical societies endorsing the principles include the American Diabetes Association, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, the Endocrine Society, the American Geriatrics Society, the American Association of Diabetes Educators, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, and the American Heart Association. In addition, representatives of the American College of Physicians and the American Academy of Family Physicians participated on the writing committee. While these organizations have policies on endorsing guidelines that this document has not fulfilled, they nonetheless have said they plan to promote it.

The 10 principles are:

Identify people with undiagnosed diabetes and prediabetes.
Manage prediabetes to prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes.
Provide ongoing self-management education and support for people with or at risk for diabetes and its complications.
Provide individualized nutrition therapy for people with or at risk for diabetes.
Encourage regular physical activity for people with or at risk for diabetes.
Control blood glucose to prevent or delay the onset of diabetes complications and avert symptoms of hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia.
Provide blood-pressure and cholesterol screening and control, and smoking-cessation and other therapies to reduce cardiovascular disease risk
Provide regular assessments to detect and monitor diabetes microvascular complications and treatments to slow their progression.
Consider the needs of special populations — children, women of childbearing age, older adults, and high-risk racial and ethnic groups.
Provide patient-centered diabetes care.

Practice Pearls:

Guiding Principles for the Care of People With or at Risk for Diabetes was produced by the federally funded National Diabetes Education Program (NDEP)
The document pulls together common elements from various medical society guidelines for diabetes and prediabetes and is essentially a "quick-read" reference providing guidance for clinicians
It is focused on individual care and treatment for each patient

NDEP Press Release