irrationalJohn
Well-Known Member
- Messages
- 108
- Type of diabetes
- LADA
- Treatment type
- Pump
I am probably about a year away from being able to read comments about the 640G from people who live in the same country that I do. So clearly I am only speculating. But I have used Medtronic/MiniMed pumps since 1997 so, rightly or wrongly, I have a tendency to think I know how the company's designs will tend to work.I thought the insulin suspend would work if you tested bloods via the contour as it sends the results to the pump (as the only other person in Cornwall advised me). I thought this reading would be enough to suspend or have I got this wrong ?!
I doubt the 640G pump suspends as a reaction to a meter BG reading transmitted to the pump. Why? Well simply because it would be assumed that the person wearing the pump is actively involved at that point and could decide for themselves how they wish to treat a low BG.
The intent behind what Medtronic marketing has dubbed "Threshold Suspend" is to stop or at least mitigate an upcoming hypo which the pump user is essentially oblivious to. This implies that the hypo is detected from the glucose sensor results, not a BG meter result.
The most common example of where this might be useful is overnight while sleeping. But some have found it helpful in other contexts such as while presenting to a group or while driving or whatever. If the hypo is mild enough that suspending the basal can deal with it, then folks don't necessarily need to stop to test and treat while in the middle of doing something else. They can let the pump "handle it" if they are comfortable with that.
The other nice thing about the 640G and the reason I view it as superior to its predecessor, the Veo (aka 530G in the US), is that when the CGM reports your glucose levels have risen, the pump restarts the basal.
Implicit in all of this is that the Medtronic CGM is working well enough for you that the pump can predict and try to cope with your lows and can reliably detect when your glucose has recovered.
It's essentially a simplistic approach, but the reports I have read have so far been favorable. I wonder how long it will be before this approach is duplicated in the pumps which use Dexcom sensors? The soonest I'll be likely to be able to give it a try is sometime in the spring of 2017. My current pump warranty does not expire until then. (In the U.S. the expiration of the pump warranty period is typically the time the "powers that be" will pay for migrating to a new pump.)