Aim: The purpose of this study was to investigate the intervention of flash glucose monitoring system (FGM) on the diabetes related distress among young type 1 diabetes.
Methods: A 12 weeks prospective study was carried out among 187 children and adolescents (aged 13-19 years, 56.7% female) with T1D, who used conventional finger-pricking method for self-testing the glucose. The trial was conducted between March 2019 and July 2019. For carrying out the study, the FGM sensors were placed on each participant, at the baseline visit, by a trained diabetes educator. In addition, a trained interviewer handed over the 28-item T1-Diabetes Distress Scale (T1-DDS) questionnaire to each patient, at the baseline and at 12 weeks of the study in order to collected Diabetes Distress (DD) score.
Results: In comparison to the baseline (finger pricks), the subdomains of DD such as: powerlessness (P = 0.0001), management distress (P = 0.0001), hypoglycemia distress (P = 0.0001), negative social perceptions (P = 0.0001), eating (P = 0.0001), physician distress (P = 0.0001), friend/family distress (P = 0.0001) and total T1-DDS score (P = 0.0001) were significantly decreased at 12 weeks after switching the patients from finger pricks to flash FGM. Similarly, after switching the patients to FGM, there were notable decrease were found on the clinical variable such as HbA1c at 12 weeks. After 12 weeks, we also observed significant decrease in hypoglycemia and interestingly, the frequency of glucose checking were increased among the FGM users.
Conclusion: the findings of this study evidently illustrated that after switching the patients from finger pricks to flash FGM, significant improvement were observed on DD related clinical parameters. However, further studies are required, for ascertaining whether the prolonged and consistent use of the FGM system will result in improved outcomes.
M. Aldawish: None.
