A new technology, christened, Continuous Glucose Monitoring System (CGMS), has been introduced by Chennai based M V Diabetes Specialities Centre (MVDSC) enabling for evaluation of diabetes control. The new technology helps to measure the blood glucose levels of a patient continuously upto 72 hours at a time and provides for a detailed analysis and graph for the whole period. MVDSC becomes the first diabetes centre in the country to introduce this technology, which is approved for clinical use by the US FDA.
Trials carried out by Dr V Mohan, Director, MVDSC and his team has shown that CGMS was especially useful in detecting silent hypoglycemic episodes particularly in the night and in the treatment of brittle diabetes. It also helps in solving the hitherto explained puzzle as to why some patients have near normal blood sugar levels when tested in the clinic in the usual way by doing fasting and post prandial blood sugar estimations and yet appear to have unsatisfactory glycosylated haemogloblin levels.
CGMS has been made possible by the development of a unique glucose sensor, which measures the body's glucose levels from the interstitial fluid just beneath the skin. The said sensor measures the glucose every 10 seconds and gives an average reading every 5 minutes for 72 hours. This information is stored in a monitor, of size of a pager, which can be clipped to the waist of a patient. The test is continued for 3 days and the patient is allowed to continue his or her normal activities. The data when downloaded into a computer produces a graph, which provides for very valuable information about glucose fluctuations during the whole day and is an excellent indications of the high and low sugar readings.