Self-monitoring of blood glucose: an indispensable component of diabetes treatment

Abstract

The article is an overview of glucose self-monitoring (GSM) in the treatment of diabetes. It article tells about the following: therapeutic targets of GSM before and after meals, adopted in Russia, providing individualized monitoring depending on age, presence of severe complications and risk of hypoglycemia; frequency of GSM at different types of glucose-lowering therapy; the significance of GSM for patient and physician; the functioning of photometric and electrochemical blood glucose meters; the issues of accuracy of measuring blood glucose adopted by the International Organization for Standardization of GSM systems; reasons of mistakes in measuring blood glucose related to contact of fingers with glucose particles, errors in code setting of test strips, external conditions (altitude, temperature, humidity), hematocrit, acidosis, hyperlipidemia and concentration of oxygen in blood, intake of a number of drugs; the process and guidelines of managing a diary as a primary method of storing GSM results; the data of global and Russian studies on the effectiveness of GSM. New methods of GSM are discussed in the section about continuous monitoring.