Safety, efficacy and clinical generalization of the STAR protocol: a retrospective analysis.

Background: The changes in metabolic pathways and metabolites due to critical illness result in a highly complex and dynamic metabolic state, making safe, effective management of hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia difficult. In addition, clinical practices can vary significantly, thus making GC protocols difficult to generalize across units.The aim of this study was to provide a retrospective analysis of the safety, performance and workload of the stochastic targeted (STAR) glycemic control (GC) protocol to demonstrate that patient-specific, safe, effective GC is possible with the STAR protocol and that it is also generalizable across/over different units and clinical practices.