Question

You are about to draw an outpatient 2-hour postprandial glucose he informs you that it has been only one hour and a half since he ate his lunch you are on a tight schedule because of the three phlebotomist scheduled to work today you are the only one who showed up what should you do ?

Answer 1

A glucose postprandial test involves blood sugar testing by drawing a blood sample exactly 2 hours after eating a full meal.

When a person consumes food, his blood glucose level rises. This triggers release of insulin which helps body cells to uptake glucose and store it in form of energy. In a healthy individual blood glucose level comes back to normal by 2 hours after eating. But in diabetes impaired insulin release may not be able to bring back glucose levels to normal after 2 hours.

In the above case drawing blood before 2 hours may give false positive results as enough time is not given to remove blood glucose by insulin. So the practitioner should wait for completion of 2 hours.