Royal Children’s Hospital has introduced a new way of helping children and young people with diabetes to monitor their blood glucose levels.

RCH is the first hospital in Australia to use the continuous glucose monitoring system (CGMS) in routine clinical care.  The CGMS checks blood glucose levels every 30-seconds and stores the information to memory.  Kids and their clinician can review a 72-hour period to help them identify what activity may have caused a swing in their blood glucose levels.

The device consists of a small meter the size of a mobile phone, attached to an electrode that is inserted under the skin.  The patient wears the device for 72-hours.  It’s particularly useful for very young patients who are coming to terms with the disease, and teenagers who are rebelling against the restraints of the illness.

The hospital has been using CGMS for about four months with great benefits to patients and clinicians.

‘It’s the best thing to have occurred in terms of giving us the information we require to monitor blood glucose levels,’ said the diabetes nurse educator, Rebecca Gebert.

‘The monitors are expensive and time consuming for staff, but they provide the patient and clinician with blood glucose profiles which could not be obtained by conventional blood glucose monitoring – unless you did 20 blood glucose finger-pricks a day!  It is a fantastic clinical tool’.

Funding for the devices came via international sprinter David Baxter and his involvement with Tattersall’s Champions Dream Team, a program that rewards the achievement of career milestones by selected champion athletes by donating money to their chosen charity.

By making the Commonwealth Games team, and winning a bronze medal in the 4 x 100 meter relay David achieved two goals last year, and Royal Children’s Hospital reaped the benefits.

David is a medical student with a special interest in juvenile diabetes: on Friday he will meet 18 year-old Casey and Darcy, 6, when they are fitted with monitors.  Fifteen year-old Glenn recently used the monitor and will also be here to tell David how it helped him.

• TIME:  10AM
• DATE:  Friday 31st January 2003
• PLACE:  Green Desk, Ground Floor outpatients department, RCH

Please call Julie Webber on 9345 5130 or 0407 327 418 for further details.

This story appeared on Channel 9 news on 31/1/03 in Melbourne, Newcastle, Tasmania, Tamworth, Lismore, Gosford, Port Macquarie.