CGMS advised for diabetics planning pregnancy

Kolkata: Endocrinologists have suggested continuous glucose monitoring system (CGMS) for patients having diabetes and planning pregnancy to get a correct picture of their blood sugar pattern.

``If a patient with diabetes is planning pregnancy, it is absolutely vital that blood sugar is very tightly controlled throughout the pregnancy,`` endocrinologists, including Samit Ghosal, said at a World Diabetes day awareness camp held here today. Ghosal said that failure to comply with the norms of keeping blood sugar under control and poor control of it can be grievous to the mother and the foetus. They are of the view that in patients with diabetes who are planning pregnancy, it is extremely useful to get a CGMS done and get a correct picture of their blood sugar pattern. CGMS is done with the iPro2 monitor which is attached to the abdominal wall. ``It reads the blood sugar of the person every 10 seconds and keeps a record every five minutes so that we can get 288 readings of blood sugar per day during the CGMS study period. This data is uploaded on a computer and that data is clearly visible in the form of a graph which one an understand``. Endocrinologists, speaking at a World Diabetes day programme, said that the doctors can make out how a particular patient`s blood sugar is changing throughout the day. ``There are plenty of patients who have high blood sugar at odd times which is not detected by routine tests. CGMS results can help the doctors modify the treatment to get better control of blood sugar throughout the day,`` they said. Ghosal said that patients may use glucometers to check blood sugar, `but this gives the value of blood sugar only at that particuclar time that the test is done. However, blood sugar level of a patient changes from minute to minute. To understand how the blood sugar is changing throughout the day, we now have the newly developed state-of-the art tedchnology CGMS``. CGMS, he said, would also help pick up low blood sugar especially at night which normally goes unnoticed. Diabetes experts said that Glycosylated Hemoglobin is a very useful test to detect how well blood sugar is controlled over the previous three months. ``Another good option is Insulin pumps for those people who seek complete mobility while controlling their blood sugar``, they said. PTI