In Diabetes, a Complex of Causes

NY Times ^ | October 16, 2007 | AMANDA SCHAFFER

[amchugh]

My brother in law trialled the Dexcom system. He had problems with alarms going off at night and waking him up, then when he checked with his regular meter he was in an acceptable range. He and I both love the idea of a CGM system, but the price and convenience aren't great.

I talked to a Minimed pump rep about their CGM (neat because it ties into the pump). Minimed's system was not yet approved by the FDA as a fingerstick replacement (as of earlier this year). Basically, it's useful, but insurance won't cover it, and it is around $1000 for the receiver, and I think it was ~$30 for each three day sensor.

According to the rep, the dangerous thing is that interstitial fluid monitoring can lag behind capillary blood monitoring by up to 15 minutes. The trick is to watch your trend and guess where you are headed.

[buck61]

good, old-fashioned lifestyle: Hard, physical work.

Works for me. Went from 200 to 104 average with physical work and,5mg Glipizide per day.

[Molly Pitcher]

Thanks for that info.

It 's in the range of what I've heard.

It's my son who's considering this.

[XR7]

What about Atkins? it is a fat friendly, marbled red meat lovin’ diet. I’m on it and doing fine weight loss wise—i’m not diabetic but the way things are going with foods these days we are all vulnerable I think the BLAME is the HF CORN SYRUP It is in almost everything and I mean everything

You are 100 percent correct.

[krunkygirl]

save

[toast]

My son has the Minimed one.

It is good for trends but I don’t think it is good for constant use.

The accuracy is questionable. You have to do a calibration to your regular meter at least every 12 hours. We found several times the meter and the sensor were widely different (more than 40 points). Because of the lags you are supposed to do the calibrations when the blood sugar is fairly stable. We found this more difficult than we initially thought.

The holes the sensors leave are larger than the infusion set holes. The holes took a long time to heal and my son was ending up with some scarring. He also developed a nasty rash under the little sensor transmitter. I don’t know if it was from sweat being held in by the dressing or a reaction to the label adhesive.

Our insurance paid for everything and we only had a 10% co-pay for the sensors. The sensors have to be refrigerated. My son stopped using sensors for football season but he doesn’t want to start up again. The fine tuning of pump dosing at the beginning helps, but after that there aren’t as many benefits.

[toast]

I forgot to ping you to my response.

[Molly Pitcher]

Thanks! I think my son looking at the Dexcom (?) one. Good luck to your son. My son is an active athlete, too, but he’s grown-up, and on his own, so ultimately this is his decision. I’m just doing some motherly-inquiries!

[Freedom2specul8]

marked to read later