Home monitoring of blood glucose: a retrospective assessment in 38 insulin-requiring diabetics.

A retrospective assessment of the daily blood glucose measurements over a period of four weeks was carried out on 38 insulin-dependent diabetics. It was found that for five pregnant diabetics and three diabetics with poor control, mean blood glucose fell from 9.6 to 7.9 and 14.4 to 11.0 mmol/l respectively. In contrast to eight overseas reports on home monitoring, the remaining patients made no significant improvement in their mean blood glucose at the end of four weeks. We conclude that this is probably due to the minimal supervision and possibly to the relatively short period of self-study by these patients. However, 50 percent reported fewer episodes of hypoglycaemia and 89 percent wished to continue blood testing.