Catalina Island Medical Center will be offering free diabetes screening in the post office arcade Tuesday, March 25, and Wednesday, March 26 from 8 to 10 a.m.

The screening, which includes a pinprick on a fingertip, provides a blood glucose level, which allows medical providers to determine whether or not an individual is diabetic or pre-diabetic. Because eating can skew the results, anyone who would like to be screened should avoid eating before having the test.

Based on new research and revised population estimates, medical center personnel predict that there are about 450 people with diabetes living on the island. "In the last 18 months we have had 73 patients with diabetes seen in the medical group office," said CIMC's Social Services Director Dawn Sampson "We expect that there are a lot of undiagnosed individuals out there."

Catalina Island Medical Center providers emphasize that the best way to control diabetes is to understand and manage the disease.

"People could be helped if they knew the changes they could be making in diet and exercise," said Dr. Laura Ulibarri, one of CIMC's staff physicians. "We can slow or prevent many of the problems that diabetes causes down the road if the patient is able to manage the condition."

The impact of diabetes can be dramatic. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 65 percent of those with diabetes die of stroke or heart disease -- two or three times the rate in the general population.

Ulibarri said that the problems associated with diabetes are often related to the damage it causes to the circulation and nervous system. Those problems include kidney disease, amputations and blindness.

Local patients with diabetes will soon have another option to help manage their condition.

Catalina Island Medical Center will be partnering with Loma Linda University Medical Center to provide diabetes education via video-conferencing.

"Diabetes education is essential in managing the disease," Ulibarri said. "Information gives the patient power over their condition."

The new diabetes education program will begin in late spring and will utilize the medical center's existing tele-medicine equipment.

"We have just begun to open the door on what telemedicine can provide for island residents," Sampson said. "Diabetes education is an ideal forum for the technology."