Gestational Diabetes Management: Risk Factors, Interventions, and Follow-up

Running head: GESTATIONAL DIABETES MANAGEMENT
GESTATIONAL DIABETES MANAGEMENT
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1GESTATIONAL DIABETES MANAGEMENT
Introduction
Gestational diabetes is the type of diabetes that occurs during pregnancy. At the time of
the pregnancy the hormones secreted by the placenta builds up glucose in the blood which
generally disappears after the baby is born. The focus of the report would be the management of
gestational diabetes during pregnancy.
Description of the tissue
Gestational diabetes is one of the common types of diabetes occurring in Australia
affecting many pregnant women. According to studies about 12% and 14% of women who are
pregnant have been found to be developing gestational diabetes (Moses et al. 2015). A large
population based study in Canada have demonstrated that between the years 2012- 2017, the
incidence of both GDM and PGDM has doubled from 2.7% to 5.8%. When the diabetic women
are compared to the non-diabetic pregnant women, the risk of both the perinatal mortality and
congenital anomaly have been found to be higher. Before that the rate of the gestational diabetes
in Canada was 54.5 (95% CI: 53.6–55.4) per 1,000 deliveries (Government of Canada. 2015).
Rates of the GDM have been found to be increasing with age probably due to the increase of the
weight and the body mass index. The highest rate was found to be in British Columbia and the
lowest in Nunavut. The women vulnerable to the risk of developing gestational diabetes are
those who are aged over 40 years, those who have a family history of type 2 diabetes, those who
are above the healthy weight range, those who had gestational diabetes in the previous
pregnancy, women having polycystic ovarian syndrome, those mothers who are under
antipsychotic medications. Gestational diabetes have been found to be high among the

2GESTATIONAL DIABETES MANAGEMENT
aboriginals and the ethnic groups of Melanesian, Chinese, South Asian and the Middle Eastern
women (Chamberlain et al. 2013). The major predictive factors that has been identified are
recurrent, insulin use and a high 1-h glucose level on the glucose tolerance test are those who
have had GDM in their first pregnancy (Zhu and Zhang 2016). Studies says that women with
undiagnosed hyperglycemia in many pregnancies is associated with higher rate of fetal loss and
malformation in the infants. Such fetal abnormalities can be identified by the identification of the
diabetes and effective control of the blood glucose level prior to the conception (Ae et al. 2013).
Risk of cardiovascular diseases has been found to higher in women with prior GDM. Studies
related to women with prior GDM has suggested that the chronic inflammatory response can be
present which represents cluster of cardiovascular risk factors (Buckley et al. 2012).
Due to the widespread prevalence of the GDM and the cluster of risk factors associated to
this, health promotion strategies should be taken to mitigate the risk factors of the condition.
Discussion
Health promotion program should be set in every clinical settings or communities that
would provide free checkups to the would be mothers and suggest with suitable
recommendations. A health promotion program for managing GDM should consist of a general
practitioner, a nutritionist, a physiotherapist and a community nurse (Gabbe et al. 2012). The
health promotion program would mainly focus on the following interventions:-
Life style changes for delaying the onset of the gestational diabetes
Nutrition therapy
A nutritional assessment should be done by a nutritionist present in a health promotion
program. Medical nutrition therapy (MNT) recommended by a registered dietician taking part in