The clinical utility of capillary blood glucose monitoring in the 1990s.

The purpose of this article is to explore the clinical utility of capillary blood glucose monitoring (BGM) in providing data for management decisions by persons with diabetes and by clinicians in acute and chronic care facilities, as well as in the private practice setting. Issues that affect clinical utility include: quality assurance for the BGM procedure, knowledge and beliefs regarding BGM of both the patient and the clinician, and communication patterns. Counseling patients regarding the frequency of their self-monitoring should be individualized and based on the type of treatment for managing the patients' blood glucose, their resources, and their motivation for making dietary, medication, or exercise changes based on the BGM results. Thus, the clinical utility of BGM is dependent on the quality of data generated and the utilization of these data for management decisions by informed and motivated patients and clinicians.