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Q: What are your initial treatment goals for KM?
A: Reasonable initial targets for KM would be glycemic control, lipids, and blood pressure. It may be overwhelming for some patients to address all these issues at one time, but I frequently send a newly diagnosed patient home with several medications—metformin or a thiazolidinedione, an ACE inhibitor, and a statin. Aggressively treating all the components of insulin resistance may prevent cardiovascular complications,8 so you should address all the factors that you and the patient can handle as promptly as you can (see Table 5).
I select the more aggressive AACE target of A1c<6.5%.4 As documented in DCCT,9 UKPDS,10 and other large epidemiologic studies,11 there is no threshold for complications, and aiming for near-normal glycemia in an otherwise healthy, relatively young patient is reasonable.
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