Acute hypoglycemia can lead to health damage either directly (from deleterious effects of low blood glucose supply to the brain) or indirectly, usually via trauma due to loss of consciousness or seizures. As an example, hypoglycemia may occur during driving and may obviously cause road traffic accidents….
In the vast majority of cases, recovery from a severe hypoglycemic event, even if it manifests with seizures or coma, is complete. Sometimes, neurologic abnormalities can be observed immediately after recovery of consciousness and improve afterwards. Hypoglycemic hemiplegia is an uncommon condition that has been described as a hemiparetic state, presenting in the morning when the patient awakens after a nocturnal hypoglycemic event. The episode typically resolves after a few minutes or hours and may recur. Permanent neurologic damage and death have been reported rarely, 29 especially after massive insulin overdose and delayed restoration of normoglycemia.
Another possible mechanism of acute health damage, including sudden death, due to hypoglycemia is via the induction of cardiovascular events. Hypoglycemia has been implicated in the so-called “dead-in-bed syndrome,” the unexpected death of a young person with Type 1 diabetes found dead in an undisturbed bed. It has also been suggested that the increased total mortality risk observed in the intensive glycemic control arm of the Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes (ACCORD) study might be due to the high rate of hypoglycemic events. However, this insinuation has not been verified in post hoc analysis of the trial data