A Pilot Study of the Feasibility and Accuracy of Inpatient Continuous Glucose Monitoring

Abstract

There are minimal data assessing the accuracy or use of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) in hospitalized patients. Our group was interested in its use in the perioperative period, since we suspect we would identify more extremes and thus more dangerous blood glucose levels than seen with traditional bedside blood glucose monitoring. Given the lack of data for CGM use in hospitalized patients, and the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), we felt this is a critical time to share our data. Use of CGM could potentially reduce the number of health care provider contacts and use of personal protective equipment. Eligible patients were adults (age ≥18 years) with diabetes who used intermittent home blood glucose monitoring and who were scheduled to undergo an elective general surgery at University of Washington Medical Center. The study protocol was approved by the University of Washington Institutional Review Board. The study was also registered as a clinical trial. Continuous intravenous insulin infusion was used per hospital algorithm (target blood glucose 100 mg/dL [5.6 mmol/L] to 180 mg/dL [10.0 mmol/L]) until oral consumption was resumed, at which time subcutaneous insulin was initiated. This …