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.
