ADIPS Poster Presentation Australasian Diabetes in Pregnancy Society and Society of Obstetric Medicine Australia and New Zealand Joint Scientific Meeting 2025

The One(s) That Got Away: High-Risk Misses in Post-GDM Follow-Up (#135)

Kajanan Parameshwaran 1 , Jeff R Flack 1 2 3 , Fatima Iqbal 1 , Mikey Xie 1 , Sarah Abdo 1 2 , Jenny Wright 1 , Androulla Georgiou 1 , Cunjing Li 1 , Sabina John 1 , Quynh Le 1 , Jessica Barlogie 1 , Wenjie Wang 1 , Tang Wong 1 2 3
  1. Diabetes Centre, Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital, Bankstown, NSW, Australia
  2. School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
  3. Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Background: Current ADIPS guidelines recommend that all women with gestational diabetes mellitus(GDM) undergo follow-up oral glucose tolerance test(OGTT) at 6-12 weeks post-partum to assess for persistent abnormal glucose tolerance.1

Aim: To evaluate differences in characteristics of women with GDM who attended follow-up OGTT compared to those who did not.

Methods: We analysed prospectively collected data from 8102 singleton pregnancies affected by GDM (October 1991–April 2025) for rates of follow-up OGTT attendance. The differences between women who attended follow-up OGTT and those who did not were characterised using differences in means and independent sample t-tests for continuous variables, and odds ratios and chi-squared tests for categorical variables. 

Results: A total of 3117(38.5%) woman with GDM attended follow-up OGTT. Table 1 shows differences in women who did and did not attend follow-up OGTT. Those who did not attend were younger, had higher pre-pregnancy BMI, higher HbA1c at diagnosis and greater pregnancy weight gain(all p<0.001). Furthermore, there were higher rates of pre-pregnancy obesity or overweight BMI, insulin use, large for gestational age or macrosomic babies(all p<0.001) and early GDM(p=0.034) amongst women who did not attend. Women of NZ/Pacific Islander(p<0.001), South Asian(p<0.001) and Middle Eastern(p=0.003) ethnicity were less likely to attend than women of Australian/European ethnicity. There were no differences in rates of overt diabetes in pregnancy (p=0.99) nor maximum insulin dose(p=0.71) between the groups. 

Conclusion: Rates of post-partum OGTT attendance amongst GDM women are low. Concerningly, those who did not attend were more likely to have risk factors for persistent glucose intolerance.

 

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  1. 1. Nankervis, A., McIntyre, H., Moses, R., Ross, G., Callaway, L., Porter, C., Jeffries, W., & Boorman, C. (2014). ADIPS Consensus Guidelines for the Testing and Diagnosis of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus in Australia. http://adips.org/downloads/2014adipsgdmguidelinesvjune2014finalforweb.pdf