Comparison of blood glucose management strategies to achieve control following cardiac surgery (computerized versus paper).

Introduction: Blood glucose control can be time-consuming and difficult to achieve. We hypothesized that a computerized system to obtain glucose control would enable faster "time to target" and produce less variability in blood glucose levels.
Methods: Patients who underwent cardiac surgery at a community hospital between January and December 2007 (n = 1131) with glucose control obtained under a paper protocol were compared with similar patients operated on between January and December 2008 (n = 769) whose glucose control was obtained with a computer-driven protocol.
Results: Glucose control was achieved in both groups. The computer group had less variability in glucose levels than the paper group. The mean time to target for the computer group was 3.5 (+/-1.3) hours. The time to target for the paper group was quite skewed; therefore, the median time to target was 6 hours.
Conclusions: The computer-driven protocol achieved excellent glycemic control.