glycated haemoglobin

Glycated haemoglobin was measured by a high performance liquid chromatography method.

Glycated haemoglobin and plasma electrolyte concentrations were checked every two months.

Glycated haemoglobin (HbAlc) was measured by ion exchange chromatography [ 13].

Attempts to capture the contribution of more than 25 factors possibly associated with glycaemic control left 85% of the variance in glycated haemoglobin concentrations unexplained.

Mean plasma glucose and glycated haemoglobin values, unlike complication rates, are not subject to observer error and provide useful proxy measures of outcome.

As a basis for adjustments to treatment results of self monitoring have now been superseded by the glycated haemoglobin concentration or results of fructosamine assays.

Glycaemic control as measured by random glycated haemoglobin A 1 c estimation (random haemoglobin A 1 measurement).

No significant correlation has been found between impaired gall bladder emptying and overall diabetic control as determined by the percentage of total haemoglobin present as glycated haemoglobin.

General practitioner clinical assessments parallel those of the hospital clinic and are performed in the knowledge of each patient's recent and previous random plasma glucose and glycated haemoglobin values.

The study ended with no significant differences between the groups in last recorded random plasma glucose concentration, glycated haemoglobin value, numbers admitted to hospital for a diabetes related reason, and number of deaths.

Regular 6 monthly laboratory testing of HbA1c (glycated haemoglobin) provides some assurance of long-term effective control and allows the adjustment of the patient's routine medication dosages in such cases.

The hub of the prompting system is a database which sends requests to patients asking them to provide blood and urine samples for random plasma glucose, glycated haemoglobin, and albumin estimations (fig 1).

The percentage of glycated haemoglobin in the random sample taken in the visit to the patient's home (random haemoglobin A 1 estimation) was used to measure the level of glycaemic control for each patient.

An additional measure of glycaemic control was provided by looking at the mean of all the glycated haemoglobin results for each patient since the date of randomisation and then calculating the mean of means for each group.

Pringle and coworkers do this in their large descriptive study of possible associations between a range of variables related to the patient, doctor, practice, and process of care and the concentrations of glycated haemoglobin in diabetic patients in Nottingham (p 630).

They contrast, however, with findings from the Cardiff trial, where the available measures of glycated haemoglobin indicated worse glycaemic control in the community care group at the end of the study, although there were no prerandomisation glycated haemoglobin measurements.

By the end of the study there were no differences between the groups in the means of the last recorded random plasma glucose and glycated haemoglobin concentrations, though mean random plasma glucose values had risen from baseline by 1.3 mmol/l and 1.6 mmol/l in control and prompted groups respectively (table VI).