Effect of Insulin Therapy on Traumatic Patients: A Scoping Review

Trauma is one of the most important causes of death in. Therefore, proper management and treatment of these patients can be very beneficial. Therefore, the aim of this literature was to investigate the extent, scope and nature of researches on the effect of insulin therapy on the treatment efficacy of traumatic patients.

This study is a scoping review of research that was conducted by searching in Scopus, PubMed, Embase and ScienceDirect databases with keywords related to insulin therapy and trauma. In this study, all reports with human and animals as well as cohort and clinical trial studies were reviewed.

Of the 4365 studies, 73 studies met the inclusion criteria and were evaluated, most studies examining the effect of insulin on traumatic brain injury and immune system and the fewest were in trunk trauma patients, especially chest trauma. The findings of this study showed the effect of insulin therapy on decreasing levels of IL-6, IL-8, IL-10 and TNF-α thus decreasing the inflammatory response in trauma patients. Insulin therapy can reduce the risk of infection in patients with trauma and burns thereby reducing the number of days spent in intensive care units and dependence on ventilation.

Insulin therapy can be useful in treating trauma patients but increases the rate of hypoglycemic episodes that require careful monitoring of patients’ blood glucose which can have a negative impact on treatment outcomes.