Evidence based medicine, guidelines and common sense

The American Geriatrics Society [1] has recently published a set of guidelines intended to help clinicians prioritize and attend to the particular needs of older people with diabetes mellitus. This is a welcome synthesis of the disappointingly sparse worldwide literature specifically targeted towards the needs of older diabetic people. The guidelines generally emphasise that the goals of diabetes care amongst older people remain similar to those in younger people, but acknowledge that these are likely to be complicated by the heterogeneity of the older diabetic population.