Dr. Richard K. Bernstein
"I spent a month in a major insulin pump
center and saw several things. Many of the female patients seemed to
have wings on their sides where the pump tubing was inserted and they
got lipohypertrophy from localized injections, but that was the least of
it. None of them actually had remotely normal blood sugars.
Of the new patients who visit me using pumps, there was only one whom
I was able to get near normal blood sugars. It was because he was still
in his honeymoon period of diabetes.
After a year on the pump, his blood sugar started getting
unpredictable. Why? I believe it is because of the scar tissue that
forms where you have a foreign body inserted for days at a time. We find that if we take people off of pumps and have them inject insulin,
they cannot inject into old pump sites because they won't get
predictable absorption of the insulin. They have to find new places to
inject the insulin.
I assume that the reason I have never seen other pump users
controlled, is because of the scar tissue that forms as a result of the
pump's tubing. For some people it may take several years for the scaring
to occur, but I would say that after seven years everyone who uses a
pump gets scar tissue at the infusion sites."
More on this story here.
1 comment:
Interesting to read this article. I may be saying the obvious but Richard Bernstein is a physician, research scientist, and a thriving Type 1 for 67 years.
He is the man when it comes to diabetes.
Martin
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