Blood glucose awareness training in Dutch type 1 diabetes patients: one-year follow-up.
BACKGROUND
American studies have shown positive effects of Blood Glucose Awareness Training (BGAT) on the recognition of hypoglycaemia. We evaluated the effects of BGAT among Dutch patients, and compared individual training with training in the original group format.


METHODS
Fifty-nine type 1 diabetes patients participated in BGAT in either a group (n = 37) or an individual (n = 22) setting. Before and one year after training they performed up to 70 measurements, two to four a day, at home on a handheld computer. During each measurement they estimated their blood glucose (BG), indicated whether they would be participating in traffic and raised their BG on the basis of their estimation, and then measured their BG. The incidence of severe hypoglycaemia and traffic accidents was also assessed.


RESULTS
BGAT had positive effects on hypoglycaemic awareness, decisions not to drive and to raise the blood glucose during hypoglycaemia, severe hypoglycaemic episodes and traffic accidents. The accuracy of BG estimations only improved after group training, while after individual training patients tended to measure more or more extremely high BG values.


CONCLUSIONS
The training improved awareness of hypoglycaemia, and seems worthy of implementation in The Netherlands.
Broers
S
S
Medical Psychology Section, Department of Medical Psychology, Amsterdam Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. s.broers@amc.uva.nl
van Vliet
K P
KP
le Cessie
S
S
Spinhoven
Ph
P
van der Ven
N C W
NC
Radder
J K
JK
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001364:Awareness; D001786:Blood Glucose / Q000378:metabolism; D015190:Blood Glucose Self-Monitoring; D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid; D003922:Diabetes Mellitus, Type 1 / Q000097:blood / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007003:Hypoglycemia / Q000097:blood / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D010353:Patient Education as Topic
D001786:Blood Glucose