Continuous glucose monitoring in 2011

Psychosocial Aspects of Continuous Glucose Monitoring: Connecting to the Patients' Experience

Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) systems provide people with diabetes with valuable real-time information on glucose trajectories and trends, thus offering opportunities for improving diabetes self-management. Ample evidence from clinical trials underscores CGM effectiveness for biomedical outcomes including HbA1C and hypoglycemia. However, interindividual variability in CGM uptake seems to be substantial: Neither do all individuals with diabetes adopt CGM readily in their diabetes self-management, nor do all of them benefit from CGM. In this article, we focus on CGM effects on quality of life and the potential role of psychosocial patient characteristics for determining the uptake and outcomes of CGM. After providing a brief overview on existing evidence on psychosocial factors in CGM use, gaps in existing research are identified and directions for future research are proposed that could answer key research questions and offer guidance for clinical diabetes care.