Continuous Blood Glucose Monitoring

Anyone know anything about these monitors?

CGM are about and have advanced abit and some of the pump manufcturers have incorparated them into there pumps...

You can get a stand a lones, but both a ver expensive and off the top of my head the last time I looked you were looking at around £500-£700 for the monitor and something like £80 for a pack of sensors, which you can insert and use for about 72 hours if you don't have a problem and need to change..

You would still have to calibrate each sensor as you use, and if the monitor alarms to say you are going high or low, you have to double check with a finger prick test..

Some clinic will loan a meter if deemed that it would be useful, and there are many clinics that haven't got any!

There is stil some problems with them, and most who have them only use to give a idea to what is happen through the 24 hour period rather than completly taking the reading as being totally accurate... To find patterns..

It is very difficult to get funding from PCT's for these as they are not covered by any NICE guildelines

This is going to sound flippant. It's half flippant, but I do seriously mean it too!
Get a hypo-alert dog! I don't know the real name, but a dog that is trained to warn you when you are getting hypo. I don't know much about it at all - I've only read about seizure alert dogs in the past.
As a joke I suggested my Mum (T2) get a dog and train it up because she's not too good about stopping gardening, for eg, when she knows she needs a drink and something to eat. She's a 'I'll weed up to that plant before I finish' sort of person. Pain is good or something! She won't stop, even when she feels wobbly, or it starts to rain! She'll even do the washing up before she has a drink or snack because that's what she'd decided to do before she started gardening.
But would she take the hint when a dog told her? Who knows!

ps -
it didn't help when she was prescribed too much metformin, which she recognised by testing. But didn't want to pester the doctor! 77 year old ladies don't seem to want to complain, do they?
I'm turning into a long-distance diabetes monitor!

silverand Ebony

Not such a flippent Idea as you think...

I work as a dog handler, and 6 of the kennels (one block) is reserved for labadour rescue, and we have had a couple that have picked up and warned me of a pending hypo..

One I wished I could have taken home with me, he picked up and wouldn't stop until I paid the attention, then he would ignore me until I checked and treated!

The only problem is sometimes a dog can be so highly strung that they sense and don't know how to react, and I have been bitten quite nastily by one dog as approached the hypo...

They're more widely available in the States but the sensors are *very* expensive and they are none too accurate yet, they don't register swift changes as fast as a fingerprick test for example.

There are various types. Some display the reading, some don't (download to computer afterwards to see trends). Important to remember they read the level in your interstitial fluid, not your blood, so there's a delay of 10-15 minutes in results compared to fingerstick readings. Hence you can't rely on them to show you a hypo as it happens - but on some you can set an alarm for when bs reaches a particular level or combination of level and speed of decrease, so you could set the alarm with a safety margin and check with a fingerstick when the alarm went off. Older ones check your levels every 5 mins, a newer one does it every 2 mins. Some have wireless transmitters for convenience of positioning sensor and display.

I was loaned one of the non-display types on loan about 3 yrs ago, but the newer ones look much better.

From websites I had the impression they cost about £60 but the nurses tell me that's for each sensor and the device itself is around £2,500. I do wonder if that's the truth or they're just trying to put me off buying my own.

I recently asked about borrowing one for a few weeks to observe the variations in my overnight basal requirements through my menstrual cycle. Seemed the perfect application, to learn what needs to change and when without waking myself up several times a night on consecutive work nights. Apart from "we can't spare one that long" and "its too expensive", their other response was that would make me "too reactive". I thought the idea was to see trends and adjust (react) accordingly - but apparently not? I can just have the CGMS for 3 days, whenever my name comes top of the list. Watch my lips, my dose needs to vary through the month and I'm trying to find out when and by how much - a random 3-day trace won't tell me about the rest of the month.

The need is there. The tools are there. How the @*%*@ one is supposed to get control without putting the two together I do not know.

Sorry, rant over. Hope at least some of the above is useful. But don't get your hopes up.

Littlesue wrote:-

From websites I had the impression they cost about £60 but the nurses tell me that's for each sensor and the device itself is around £2,500. I do wonder if that's the truth or they're just trying to put me off buying my own.

Hi although I haven't got one myself yet, Abbott sell their Navigator cgm in the UK. It's about £950 for the unit itself but £240 for a box of 6 sensors (lasts 30 days). You can see them at a London D clinic and I am told that you can "try before you buy" for a week 8)

I just picked up this quote on another forum (US) so for what it is worth here it is,

I used the continuous monitoring system for about 6 months. I DON'T RECOMMEND IT. What a nightmare. It's extremely expensive and rarely covered by insurance at all. I got lucky and did get mine covered. It was extremely inaccurate and useful for nothing. I was testing >25x some days just to verify the constant alarms it was throwing randomly. It said I was low or high all the time and I rarely was. It woke me up constantly with these alarms. Minimed was no help at all in getting it to work better. It truly made me hate my pump and I was ready to throw the damned thing out the window. Gah. It was also extremely irritating on my skin. The white dongle bit has no tape of it's own so you get to play with IV3000 constantly trying to get this $1000 device to stay taped to your abdomen. I know it sounds very appealing. I wish it worked well. It doesn't. From what I've heard, Freestyle's new Navigator seems to have much better accuracy.

Click to expand...

I want, I want, I want.

That's interesting, Sue. Do you know what make/model they were complaining about?