[Present day problems in the diagnosis of diabetes (author's transl)]

The results of a longterm study showed that only a relatively small percentage of patients with limiting disturbance of glucose tolerance progressed in the direction of diabetic manifestation. There seems therefore to be grounds for the diagnostic term diabetes to be used only for clinically overt diabetes mellitus and to allow the definitions "subclinical diabetes, chemical diabetes, latent diabetes and symptomatic diabetes" to fall into disuse. On the question of quantity for the glucose tolerance test a 75 g load was proposed as a compromise because of the occasional poor tolerance of the 100 g load. For reasons of international comparability it seems better to adhere to the 50 to 100 g load as before.