Diabetes Mellitus
Diabetes Mellitus Chapter Overview
Jennifer Kong
Chapter Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Define diabetes mellitus and differentiate between Type 1, Type 2, and gestational diabetes.
- Explain the differing roles of insulin and insulin receptors in the types of diabetes.
- Identify histological features in the pancreas associated with diabetes.
- List the diverse clinical manifestations of the onset of diabetes and explain the pathophysiology behind each of them.
- Correlate consequences of uncontrolled diabetes in the cardiovascular, neural, and renal systems.
- Briefly describe how interprofessional collaboration of health care professions work towards diagnosis and management of diabetes and its consequences.
Diabetes mellitus is a dysfunction of either insulin production and secretion (Type 1) or the tissue’s insensitivity to the insulin hormone (Type 2 & gestational). As a consequence, glucose can not get into most cells of the body resulting in high blood sugar and cells ‘starving’ for glucose. Blood sugar becomes abnormally high, regardless of when or what a person has eaten.
An increasingly common disease, diabetes mellitus is diagnosed in both adults and children; however, millions of adults have undiagnosed diabetes. In addition, the population as a whole is approaching pre-diabetic levels, a condition in which blood glucose levels are abnormally high, but not yet high enough to be classified as diabetes.
This chapter is subdivided into:
- Pre-test
- Anatomy & histology of endocrine pancreas and glucose homeostasis
- Normal gross anatomy & histology of pancreas
- Type I (1) diabetes
- Type II (2) diabetes
- Gestational diabetes
- Diagnosis of diabetes
- Consequences of chronic high sugar in other systems
- Interprofessional collaboration during care of diabetes
- Management and treatment of diabetes
- Consequences of untreated high blood sugar: diabetic ketoacidosis
- Video of patient and family’s life with Type I diabetes: the McKinstry family
- Chapter summary
- Post-test
The following abbreviations are used throughout the chapter.
| DM | Diabetes Mellitus |
| DKA | Diabetic Ketoacidosis |
| T1DM | Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus |
| T2DM | Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus |
a condition caused by destruction or dysfunction of the beta cells of the pancreas or cellular resistance to insulin that results in abnormally high blood glucose levels
