Associate Investigator,
Herman Merinoff Center for Patient Oriented Research,
Long Island Jewish Medical Center
Phone: (718) 470-7501
Email: rsilverm@lij.edu
People come to the emergency room for all sorts of reasons. Many have high blood glucose levels, but traditionally doctors focus on the medical problem at hand and simply pass the elevated glucose off as stress or a glucose response to something they just ate. But Dr. Robert Silverman knows that type 2 diabetes is a major problem, and almost half of people don’t even know they have it. Diagnosed at age 40, patients can lose 12-14 years of life to the disease. Most people with pre-diabetes can prevent diabetes by making life-style changes.
Dr. Silverman wanted to know how many emergency room patients are in a pre-diabetic state or have diabetes without any knowledge that there is anything wrong. He invited patients seen in the ER to the Feinstein Institute’s General Clinic Research Center for a fasting glucose test, and 650 people took him up on the offer. The average age was 50; the mean body mass index or BMI was 29. If they had a glucose level between 100 and 125 in the emergency room, the study volunteers had a 44 percent chance of having undiagnosed diabetes or pre-diabetes. Those with a previous glucose reading between 126 and 144 had a 60 percent chance, and the risk continued to climb the higher the glucose level.
Over 90 percent had undiagnosed diabetes with scores over 199. He is now expanding and replicating these studies. Dr. Silverman is also collaborating with scientists to study the effects of air pollution on asthma-related hospital admissions. He is also working with the New York City’s Emergency Medical Services program to study air pollution and cardiac deaths that occur outside of the hospital.
Reed Magleby, MD
LIJ Research Associate
Research: Asthma
Email: rfmagleby@gmail.com
Michael Weinreich, MD
LIJ Research Associate
Research: Asthma
Email: maw67@cornell.edu
Danilynn De Claro, MD
NUMC Research Associate
Email: danilynndeclaro@yahoo.com
Darion Pearson, MD
Jacobi Research Associate
Research: Asthma
Email: sendtodarion@gmail.com
Yvonne Giunta, MD
Fellow
Email: ygiunta@nshs.edu
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