WordNet
n. coma that can develop in inadequately treated cases of diabetes mellitus [syn: Kussmaul's coma]
Wikipedia
Diabetic coma is a reversible form of coma found in people with diabetes mellitus. It is a medical emergency.
Three different types of diabetic coma are identified:
- Severe low blood sugar in a diabetic person
- Diabetic ketoacidosis (usually type 1) advanced enough to result in unconsciousness from a combination of a severely increased blood sugar level, dehydration and shock, and exhaustion
- Hyperosmolar nonketotic coma (usually type 2) in which an extremely high blood sugar level and dehydration alone are sufficient to cause unconsciousness.
In most medical contexts, the term diabetic coma refers to the diagnostical dilemma posed when a physician is confronted with an unconscious patient about whom nothing is known except that they have diabetes. An example might be a physician working in an emergency department who receives an unconscious patient wearing a medical identification tag saying DIABETIC. Paramedics may be called to rescue an unconscious person by friends who identify them as diabetic. Brief descriptions of the three major conditions are followed by a discussion of the diagnostic process used to distinguish among them, as well as a few other conditions which must be considered.
An estimated 2 to 15 percent of diabetics will suffer from at least one episode of diabetic coma in their lifetimes as a result of severe hypoglycemia.
Usage examples of "diabetic coma".
What she had just suffered was a diabetic coma, or full-blown ketoacidosis, complicated by severe dehydration.
He seemed wide awake and rational enough, superficially a much better going concern than Marie LeGarde, but I knew that the collapse, the preliminary to the true diabetic coma, might come at any time.
Even in a diabetic coma, Lockmann had always looked like he had only to open his eyes to be on his way.
Holding it at arm's length so that he will not be plunged into a diabetic coma by its fumes, he commences a Magellanian circumnavigation of the dance floor, which is surrounded by an atoll of round tables that are adorned with white linen tablecloths, candles, and glass ashtrays.
Bobby chugged the Mountain Dew, enough sugar to induce in him a diabetic coma, enough caffeine to keep a long-haul trucker awake through a five-hundred-mile run.
Without insulin, a person's blood sugar level gets all out of whack and he (or she) could even go into a diabetic coma, which is very dangerous.
She sank into a diabetic coma, and six days later, on 14 November, with Father Francis and her sister May Incledon at her bedside in the cottage, she died.
I learned later that her mother had been rushed to the hospital in a diabetic coma and they were having trouble controlling it.
Some pitiful gallimaufry was advanced to explain these temporal and spatial dislocations, but by then I'm afraid I was far advanced in a diabetic coma.