Intravenous insulin

Diabetes can be said to be an incurable disease, because after suffering from diabetes, the patient cannot eat many foods, and it is also particularly easy to cause kidney failure. The reason for diabetes is that in life, people often like to eat some sweet foods, and the metabolism of kidney function is relatively poor. After suffering from diabetes, insulin injection is required, so where should insulin be injected?

Intravenous and subcutaneous injections are the earliest and most classic routes of insulin administration. Currently, patients with type 1 diabetes and some type 2 diabetes mainly control blood sugar by subcutaneous injection of insulin. Under what circumstances should intravenous insulin be used? For diabetic patients with acute complications such as ketoacidosis, diabetic patients in the perioperative period, delivery period, and short-term acute situations such as concurrent acute infection, insulin needs to be added to the rehydration so that blood sugar can be controlled within the normal range as soon as possible.

If the patient cannot eat after blood sugar drops, insulin can be added to the glucose solution to replenish fluid and provide energy without causing blood sugar to rise. Currently, only short-acting insulin can be injected intravenously. Intravenous injection can rapidly reduce blood sugar, generally to the lowest point in 20-30 minutes. However, intravenous insulin is also cleared quickly from the blood circulation, with a half-life of only 5-6 minutes. Intermediate-acting insulin is a fusion of long-acting and short-acting insulin, which contains some long-acting insulin and short-acting insulin. The long-acting part needs to be slowly released subcutaneously to achieve the time we need. If it is injected intravenously, it will change its absorption rate and cannot achieve its intermediate-acting effect. Moreover, rapid hemolytic absorption will also cause hypoglycemia.

Insulin preparations that can be injected intravenously include regular insulin from animal sources (also called regular insulin and soluble neutral insulin) and recombinant human insulin (including Novolin R, Humulin R, and Glycines R). Short-acting insulin is the only insulin that can be used for intravenous injection because it takes effect relatively quickly after intravenous injection and survives in the body for a relatively short time. Short-acting insulin takes effect quickly after intravenous injection, is not easily accumulated in the body, can quickly lower blood sugar, and the concentration can be adjusted at any time.