Abstract Aim To identify the percentage of diabetic laparotomy patients admitted to ITU who had a pre-operative blood glucose check, and the frequency of post-operative blood glucose checks in the immediate 24 hours post-operatively, with any association with 30 day mortality Method We identified diabetic post-laparotomy patients admitted to a large tertiary hospital ICU, identifying handover between medical and critical care teams and perioperative blood glucose monitoring up to the first 24 hours of ICU admission post-operatively using both physical and electronic notes. Results We identified 79 diabetic laparotomy patients admitted to ICU of which 49.3% (39/79) did not have diabetes recorded as a comorbidity in nursing handover charts. We found that 27.8% of these patients did not have an intra-day pre-operative blood glucose recorded and that frequency of post-operative glucose monitoring in the first 24 hours ranged from 0.5 to 10 hourly. ITU monitoring charts could only be found for 69 of the 79 patients, out of which 40.7% of patients had at least one hyperglycaemic episode while 11.6% of patients had a hypoglycaemic episode. We found no correlation between incidences of hyperglycaemia and hypoglycemia or handover with 30 day mortality (13.9%). Conclusion 72.2 percent of post laparotomy diabetic patients admitted to ICU have a preoperative blood glucose recorded, with considerable variance in blood glucose monitoring frequency 24 hours post-laparotomy from half hourly to 10 hours between blood glucose monitoring but we found no association between hyperglycaemic and hypoglycaemic events in the first 24 hours post-laparotomy with 30 day mortality.