Continuous Glucose Monitors Effective RPM for ESRD Patients
Continuous glucose monitors can accurately measure blood sugar levels even among patients on dialysis, a population on which CGM hasn’t been widely tested.
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- Researchers from the University of Virginia Health System have found that using a factory-calibrated continuous glucose monitor (CGM) effectively measured changes in blood sugar levels even when treating people on dialysis, a population on which this type of remote patient monitoring hasn’t been widely tested.
Along with the rapid implementation of telehealth and remote patient monitoring devices, continuous glucose monitors are becoming a highly used tool among diabetes patients. When on dialysis, patients need to track blood sugar levels quickly, as hypoglycemia can be lethal. Continuous glucose monitors are able to manage blood sugar levels among these patients, as well as those battling end-stage renal disease (ESRD).
But until now, testing CGM as a key remote patient monitoring tool hasn’t happened among the ESRD patient population, the researchers said. ESRD patients are medically complex, they said, so they are usually left out of clinical trials assessing CGM as remote patient monitoring devices.