Diabetes Monitoring Devices

Diabetes or Diabetes Mellitus is a health condition in which patients have a high level of sugar in the blood. The sugar level is increased due to non production of insulin in the body or lack of response from body to the produced insulin. Insulin is a hormone produced in pancreas and responsible for management of sugar level in the body. Patients of Diabetes need to regularly check their blood sugar level.

Continuous monitoring of blood sugar level helps to examine different aspects related to diabetes. Doctors can easily find out how the blood glucose level reacting to insulin, exercise, food, and other factors. It also helps in correcting insulin doses taken by the patients. It also helps in finding insuline intake ratios for food intake. Other benefit of regular monitoring is that it helps in correcting hyperglycemia. Monitoring during uncommon periods help to identify problems in insulin dosing. Thus it is important to regularly check blood sugar level in a diabetic patient. There are many devices to monitor glucose level in the blood. Some of glucose monitoring devices are as follows:

Blood Glucose Meters

One of the most commonly used glucose monitoring device is glucose monitor, also known as gluco meter. It is an electronic device which measurs the blood glucose level. Medical practitioners advise not to share gluco meter with anyone. In case of sharing it should be cleaned properly before use. A small drop of blood is placed on a disposable test strip and the glucose meter gives the reading for glucose level in few seconds. These meters are easy to use as they do not need any coding. They provide for multiple testing strips, so a patient can test glucose level multiple times. Most of the blood glucose meter with advanced technology has software to download meter results to a computer. This makes sharing information with doctors easy.

Fingerstick Devices

Other common glucose monitoring device is fingerstick device. It is used for taking blood for test by pricking the skin of the patient. Fingerstick devices are of two main types.

Reusable Devices

These devices are pen like and can be used again and again. Theses devices have fecility of replacing the lancet after each use. These devices should only be used by individual persons for self-monitoring of blood glucose to avoid any type of infection.

Single-use, auto-disabling Fingerstick Devices

These are disposable devices. They have an auto-disabling feature to prevent its use more than once.

Continuous Glucose Monitoring

A continuous glucose monitor (CGM) measures glucose levels on a continuous basis. Patient needs to have a a disposable glucose sensor under the skin for a few days. Then it is replaced. Sensor is linked to a non-implanted transmitter, which gives measurement of glucose level to an electronic receiver. But it needs to have traditional blood monitoring simultaneously.

Glucose Sensing Bio-implants

There are glucose sensing bio-implants also available for continuous glucose monitoring. They are in research phase and promise to lessen the burden by a minor surgical sensor implantation. It is expected to have a life of 1 to 5 years.

Non-invasive Technologies

Other methods under development for glucose monitoring are IR detection, ultrasound and dielectric spectroscopy. They are expected to make the glucose monitoring progress easy and without the need of blood.
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