A recent study that was reported to the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) has argued that continuous glucose monitoring (GCM) has value as a means of treating people with type 1 diabetes.
Although GCM has some limitations, such as the accuracy of subcutaneous readings, it does appear to help glycaemic control for type 1 diabetes as compared to self-monitoring, and that people with the condition reported much bigger reductions in haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) through continuous monitoring instead of self-monitoring.
When age was taken into account, differences in HbA1c were substantially bigger for adults and paediatric patients on GCM as compared to self-monitoring. Assessment of four studies showed that patients who carried out GCM had around twice the chance of achieving their HbA1c targets as patients on self-monitoring.
There was also a significantly less amount of hypos for patients on continuous monitoring, which was only really significant for real-time rather than retrospective monitoring.
The scientists carried out a review of data from 14 different studies involving 1,268 patients. Przemyslaw Rys, of Polish company HTA Consulting, commented “What is important to emphasize is that the advantage of continuous monitoring proved only for real-time devices, not for retrospective continuous monitoring.”

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