Abstract
BACKGROUND: The glycemic penalty index (GPI) is a measure to assess blood glucose (BG) control in critically ill adult patients but needs to be adapted for children and infants. METHOD: The squared differences between a clinical expertise penalty function and the corresponding polynomial function are minimized for optimization purposes. The average of all penalties (individually assigned to all BG readings) represents the patient-specific GPI. RESULTS: Penalization in the hypoglycemic range is more severe than in the hyperglycemic range as the developing brains of infants and children may be more vulnerable to hypoglycemia. Similarly, hypoglycemia is also more heavily penalized in infants than in children. CONCLUSIONS: Extending the adult GPI toward the age-specific GPI is an important methodological step. Long-term clinical studies are needed to determine the clinically acceptable GPI cut-off level.