Perioperative Management of Patients Receiving Sodium-Glucose Cotransporter 2 Inhibitors: Development of a Clinical Guideline at a Large Academic Medical Center.

The use of sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) is increasing rapidly for patients with diabetes, heart failure, and chronic kidney disease. These medications can cause euglycemic diabetic ketoacidosis in the perioperative period, and the Food and Drug Administration recently updated their recommendations that they be held for at least 3-to-4 days preoperatively. There is a paucity of guidelines for the perioperative management of patients taking SGLT2i who present for emergent surgery or elective surgery having not held the medications per Food and Drug Administration guidelines. At the University of Pennsylvania, a multidisciplinary team from the Departments of Anesthesiology, Endocrinology, and Pharmacy has developed comprehensive guidelines detailing preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative management for patients using these medications. In this article, the authors present these guidelines and discuss challenges encountered while implementing them at a large academic medical center with satellite hospitals and surgery centers with varying resources and patient populations.

Dual PPAR alpha/gamma agonists: promises and pitfalls in type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a disease of complex pathogenesis and pleiotropic clinical manifestations. The greatest clinical challenge in this disease is the prevention of the long-term complications, many of which involve cardiovascular outcomes. The peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) alpha and gamma isoforms of the family of nuclear transcription factors are pharmaceutical targets for therapeutic intervention because they can potentially ameliorate not only the hyperglycemia of diabetes, but also the dyslipidemia that is characteristic of this disorder (low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, high triglycerides, small, dense low-density lipoprotein particles). Novel drugs with dual PPAR alpha and gamma activity have been under clinical development for type 2 diabetes, and they have shown promise in early studies with regard to glucose lowering and improved lipid profile when compared with the PPAR-gamma-specific thiazolidinediones. Unfortunately, the dual PPARs available to date have some of the PPAR-gamma-associated side effect profile, including fluid retention and weight gain, which have limited the further clinical development of higher doses that show improved efficacy. This review will briefly summarize our understanding of the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes, the role of the PPAR family of receptors, and the potential for clinical use of this novel emerging class of agents that serve as dual activators of both PPAR-alpha and PPAR-gamma.