A Clinical Insight into Gestational Diabetes

Abstract

Pregnancy is a diabetogenic state manifested by insulin resistance and hyperglycae-mia. The age group at risk of getting gestational diabetes is between 20 and 39 years in 96.8% of cases. Gestational diabetes is the development of symptoms and signs of diabetes mellitus during pregnancy and the glucose level reverting to normal during puerpe-rium. Depending on the type of population and the diagnostic criteria used, gestational diabetes is said to complicate 1-16% of all pregnancies. Many researchers in American, European and Asian surveys have reported 3-6% of prevalence. Compared with white European women, the prevalence rate for GD is increased approximately elevenfold in women from the Indian subcontinent, eightfold in South East Asia, sixfold and threefold in Arab and black Afro-Caribbean women, respectively. Such figures draw a potent clinical interest towards gestational diabetes (GD), and this chapter attempts to highlight some major aspects of GD in respect to both the mother and the foetus or the newborn specially emphasizing on its management as per the World Health Organization (WHO) and International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (FIGO).