Peter, M, Rioles, N, Liu, J, Hguyen, H, Chapman, K, Wolf, W, Perez, M, Poon, J, Mitchell, B

BACKGROUND

  • Fear of hypoglycemia (FoH) impedes psychological wellbeing, quality of life, and diabetes management.
  • American Diabetes Association (ADA) recommends screening
    for FoH using standardized and validated tools and in the
    case of positive findings, referring to a mental health
    provider.
  • Existing FoH measures have limited uptake in clinical practice
    and lack thresholds informing action.
  • We developed and validated a short, actionable 9-item
    screener that assesses two domains of FoH – “worry” (6
    items) and “behavior” (3 items).
  • The FoH screener showed good internal consistency
    (Cronbach’s α = 0.88) and is hoped to be used in clinical
    practice.

OBJECTIVE

To understand FoH in a real-world clinical setting, we evaluated
the prevalence of FoH and the associated demographic and
clinical characteristics in adult patients with type 1 diabetes (T1D)
using the newly validated FoH screener.

View the poster presentation