Skip to main content
  • Poster presentation
  • Open access
  • Published:

Preliminary ICU experience of a novel intravascular blood glucose sensor

Introduction

A need for continuous blood glucose monitoring has always been expressed by critical care practitioners. The results from several iterations of a novel optical fluorescence-based intravascular blood glucose sensor were examined for correlation with an accepted laboratory assay. Ever since Van Den Berghe's group demonstrated reductions in hospital mortality and morbidity from the application of tight glycaemic control [1], many groups have attempted to replicate those results with limited success. Practitioners have speculated upon the reasons behind this observation, and have cited manpower implications and incidence of hypoglycaemic episodes as contributing factors [2]. Investigators have speculated that a continuous blood glucose sensor might contribute towards safe effective glycaemic control [3].

Methods

A series of postoperative and direct admission ICU patients had an optical fluorescence-based intravascular glucose sensor (GlySure Ltd, Abingdon, UK) placed into the left internal jugular vein on admission to the ICU. The sensor remained in situ throughout the ICU stay. Periodic blood samples and simultaneous real-time values of blood glucose measured by the sensor were recorded. The results were correlated with the results of blood sample analysed by a Yellow Springs Instrument glucose analyser. The sensor, which has a heparin coating on its surface, required no further heparinisation; a 'keep vein open' rate of normal saline infusion was maintained throughout the period of operation.

Results

Sixteen patients received the current configuration blood glucose sensor; during their combined length of stay, 296 paired values were obtained for correlation purposes. A total 99.6% of these values fall within the A+B areas of the Clarke error grid. All sensors continued to function throughout the length of stay, maximum 92 hours, and were withdrawn immediately prior to discharge from the ICU.

Conclusion

The pre-production intravascular blood glucose sensors successfully track blood glucose values, with improved insight into blood glucose variability in ICU patients.

References

  1. Van den Berghe G, et al.: Intensive insulin therapy in critically ill patients. N Engl J Med 2001, 345: 1359-1367. 10.1056/NEJMoa011300

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Aragon D, et al.: Evaluation of nurse work effort and perception about blood glucose testing in TGC. Am J Crit Care 2006, 15: 370-377.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Krinsley J, Preiser JC: Moving beyond TGC to safe effective glycemic control (SEGC). Crit Care 2008, 12: 149. 10.1186/cc6889

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Mulavisala, K., Gopal, P., Crane, B. et al. Preliminary ICU experience of a novel intravascular blood glucose sensor. Crit Care 16 (Suppl 1), P175 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1186/cc10782

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/cc10782

Keywords