Endocrine Abstracts

All those involved in delivery of health care are obliged to deliver safe and effective management for patients. Effectiveness is often achieved where specialists for the condition are involved. In contrast, patient-safety depends of recognition of the condition in question and then use of appropriate treatment and management, regardless of who is seeing the patient. This is particularly the case where there may be a rare disease confused for a common one, and where the treatments needed are completely different. It is in this scenario that there is an absolute need to rename the condition formally known as ‘diabetes insipidus’. Patients with this condition may present to the generalist and be confused with patients who have ‘diabetes mellitus’, with reports for some of desmopressin not being made available or not being given resulting in life-threatening dehydration, and for others having frequent glucose finger prick testing when it was not needed. Whilst the word ‘diabetes’ is time-honoured being first used around 250-300 BC and is derived from Greek meaning ‘syphon – to pass through’, it has no place in the 21st century as a descriptor for the pathophysiological condition of ‘AVP deficiency or resistance’; the continued use of ‘diabetes insipidus’ perseverates patient risk. and for this reason its use must be abandoned. There are precedents for name change in medicine, and although this takes time and effort to achieve, the end goal of enhancing patient safety justifies the endeavour!