A comparative study between capillary and venous blood glucose levels of type 2 diabetes mellitus patients in intensive care units

Abstract

Introduction Blood glucose estimation is required to be done rapidly or even on hourly basis for effective dosing of insulin in diabetic patients admitted in intensive care units (ICUs). Glucose test strip precision is usually considered clinically acceptable if the difference from the reference value (lab method) does not exceed 15%. To use glucometers in ICU settings the correlation between capillary blood glucose and venous blood glucose is essential. Materials and Methods This study was a cross sectional, descriptive study which was carried out in a large tertiary care teaching hospital in Pune, from 01 Nov 2015 to 31 Oct 2016. After excluding all the confounding factors, 65 patients were included in this study. The laboratory results and glucose strip results were tabulated in a master chart as sample 1(capillary/venous- time of admission), sample 2(capillary /venous – 24 hrs), sample 3 (capillary /venous – 48 hrs) and also segregated into less than 250 mg/dl and more than 250 mg/dl for determining the correlation and agreement between the capillary and venous blood glucose levels. Results A good correlation existed between the CBG and VBG of sample 1 (R2 =0.995, p