"THE HEART OF THE MATTER"
a special program of the National Emergency Medicine Association (NEMA)

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Week: 598.5 

Guest: Dr. James R. Gavin III, Sr. Science Officer, Howard Hughes Medical Inst. 

Topic: Undiagnosed diabetics 

Host/Producer: Steve Girard 

NEMA: Undiagnosed diabetics...coming up... 

SPOT: A GREAT LITTLE BOOK TO HELP YOU GROW YOUR KIDS...THE LITTLE BOOK OF PARENTING, FROM THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY MEDICINE ASSOCIATION....CALL 800-332-6362 TO GET ONE. 

NEMA: Diabetes is a huge, and growing problem in the U.S. This is Dr. James Gavin of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute... 

GAVIN: The hallmark of diabetes is high blood sugar...that's common to all forms of diabetes...and it's the high blood sugar that cause the problems: the eye disease, the blindness, the kidney failure, the strokes, the heart attacks and the amputations. So, all forms of diabetes are serious, and have to be treated aggressively. 

NEMA: But too many of us don't know we have the early stages of a devastating disease... 

GAVIN: We have about 16 million people who are affected by diabetes...only about half of those cases have been diagnosed....the other half are walking around right now, with the disease, but they don't know they have it.  

NEMA: An international panel headed by Dr. Gavin has issued new guidelines for diagnosing diabetes, aimed at getting early treatment for the disease. I'm Steve Girard at The Heart of the Matter.