ADVANCE for Administrators of the Laboratory • June 2012 Vol.21 No.6

organ failure, the latter often being the cause of death. Most ICU patients, even those who did not previously suffer from diabetes, are hyperglycemic, which is presumed to reflect an adaptive development of insulin resistance. Marik and Preiser reviewed seven randomly controlled studies, including over 11,000 ICU patients, and found that TGC did not reduce the 28-day mortality (odds ratio 0.95) or the incidence of blood stream infections (OR 1.04). They also noted that the incidence of hypoglycemia was higher in the TGC group (OR 7.7). It appears that the relation between mortality and the proportion of calories provided parenterally is significant (p = 0.005).