Comparison of venous, capillary and interstitial blood glucose data measured during hyperbaric oxygen treatment from patients with diabetes mellitus.

INTRODUCTION

Patients undergoing hyperbaric oxygen treatments (HBOT) have been shown to experience a reduction in blood glucose (BG) levels during a treatment. This necessitates frequent assessment of BG levels. Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) may represent an alternative to the current finger prick monitoring method in-chamber, however, continuous sensor glucose (SG) data has not been validated in situ. The aim was to determine the validity of continuous SG and intermittent BG monitoring with serum BG levels in diabetic patients during HBOT.

METHODS

Measurements were obtained (finger prick [capillary sample], CGM [interstitial fluid], and serum [venous sample]) at baseline, and at 30, 60, 90 and 120 minutes during the hyperbaric treatment. Data were analysed by calculating intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and using mixed effects linear regression.

RESULTS

The ICC results (n = 10 patients) between the three methods indicated very high and statistically significant absolute agreement at baseline (pre-dive) (ICC = 0.90, 95% CI 0.74-0.97), at 30 minutes (ICC = 0.85, 95% CI 0.61-0.96), 60 minutes (ICC = 0.86, 95% CI 0.58-0.96), 90 minutes (ICC = 0.87, 96% CI 0.63-0.96) and 120 minutes (ICC = 0.90, 95% CI 0.70-0.97). Capillary glucose and CGM SG readings were each within 1 mmol·L-1 on average of the serum glucose reading, with multi-level linear regression finding the average difference between the CGM SG and capillary glucose methods of BG sampling was not statistically significant (P = 0.81).

CONCLUSIONS

The CGM SG data were comparable with glucose readings from capillary monitoring. Both CGM and capillary data were consistent with serum values.