The control of the well adjusted diabetes treatment, especially in the isulin treatment, is based on regular glycemia checks with the help of a portable glucometer. We cannot imagine that we could reach satisfactory compensation of diabetes without this device.
Still, even this way of monitoring brings only a partial image of the changes in the blood glucose concentrations. In the last ten years, a number of research centres have tried to develop the so-called continuous monitors – measuring devices that would enable checking the glucose concentrations in a body continually throughout the day.
These monitors, unlike the standard glucometres which are able to state the glycemia values from capillary blood, measure the glucose concentrations in the subcutaneous tissues (interstitial liquid or tissular fluid).
This must be sometimes taken into account if data taken by this monitor are evaluated (especially if the monitor takes the concentration readings in real time) since if glycemia changes faster, then its value in the interstitial environment can have a delay of several minutes compared to the value in the capillary blood (it may, therefore, happen that the glucometer shows a value of 3.0 mmol/l while the subcutaneous device in the interstitial environment may still show a good value of for instance 5.0 mmol/l.