What is Stress Hyperglycemia? A Suggestion for an Improvement of its Definition

ContextStress hyperglycemia has been studied in numerous critical illnesses for several decades. Despite the extensive accumulation of knowledge about this topic, the definition of stress hyperglycemia is not updated since 2007. Subjects and MethodsWe performed a narrative review about stress hyperglycemia in acute myocardial infarction (AMI), aiming to improve its current definition and to give evidence supporting this. ResultsThe definition of stress hyperglycemia in 2021 we recommend is: "SH is a high ABGly in an AMI patient irrespective of DM status. It can be calculated as e.g., "stress hyperglycemia ratio" or "admission glucose delta"/"glycemic gap". This definition may serve to start a consensus document of the experts in the field. The evidence accumulates supporting the possibility to recognize stress hyperglycemia also in AMI patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) by calculating glycemia during the previous 2-3 months using glycated hemoglobin. Moreover, it is now obvious that 2007 definition of stress hyperglycemia did not take into account the necessity to separate cut-offs for the subgroups with vs. without DM. ConclusionsWe demonstrated the insufficiency of the current 2007 definition of stress hyperglycemia, provided evidence-based recommendation for the improvement and suggested the need for a consensus of the experts on this topic. In order to optimize the treatment of stress hyperglycemia in numerous critical illnesses, we ought to have its universal definition (as we already have the universal definition of AMI).