According to figures from the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare,15 per cent of all women aged up to 49 who gave birth in an Australian hospital in 2016-17 – more than 40,800 women – developed the condition.
In an article in the latest edition of theMedical Journal of Australia,Jenny Doust,Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Queensland,and colleagues argue that the current testing method,a fairly standard glucose test,is outdated.
Professor Doust said the method,called the one-step method,was too much of a one-size-fits-all approach,and should be replaced with a two-step method of testing.
“The blood glucose threshold for diagnosing gestational diabetes was set at an arbitrary point some years ago,and there’s been debate ever since that it was set too low,” she said.
Professor Doust and her colleagues saya 2021 US study showed that the one-step method resulted in almost a doubling of diagnoses compared with the two-step,but no corresponding health benefits for the mothers or the babies.
Most Australian hospitals had been using the one-step method to test for gestational diabetes up until 2020,when they switched back to the two-step method due to the pandemic.
That was because the one-step method required mothers to stay in a health facility for several hours while blood sugar readings were taken at various points,while the two-step method did not require them to be in a waiting room as long.