[Hyperglycemia in the pediatric emergency. Not everything is diabetes]

Hyperglycemia is a rare finding in pediatric emergency. Hyperglycemia as pediatric emergency presentation (blood glucose>126 mg/dl), may correspond to a diabetes mellitus type 1, the finding of a casual hyperglycemia in an obese patient and type 2 diabetes, hyperglycemia without decompensation of the monogenic diabetes or stress hyperglycemia. The latter are often not ketosis, limited to acute illness and usually do not develop diabetes at follow-up. We found only 2.9% of patients (8/270 children) with stress hyperglycemia who developed diabetes mellitus at follow-up. The use of insulin in the most severe cases improves the evolution and decreases morbidity. There is an overlap of intermediate states in the presentation of hyperglycemia requiring specialist help to unravel the underlying state in the follow-up.