SCREENING FOR DIABETES MELLITUS. WITH PREGNANCY BY RANDOM CAPILLARY BLOOD GLUCOSE MEASUREMENTS

Abstract

Diabetes mellitus with pregnancy ramians an important cause of maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality, early diagnosis and treatment reduces this risk. A glucose tolerance test performed on all women at an appropriate stage in pregnancy would detect all cases of diabetes mellitus but at a considerable cost in

term of finance, laboratory resources and staff, for many clinics it would be impractical and impossible. Various screening procedures have been proposed to identify pregnant women requiring an oral glucose tolerance test.

The present study was done to evaluate the utility of patients screening for diabetes mellitus during pregnancy with the use of random capillary blood glucose measurements (RCBG). Two hundred pregnant women, at 24 to 32 weeks gestation, had a random capillary blood glucose measurements and 75 gms OGTT with the use of reflectance meter (Reflulux II, Boehringer Monheiom Co). The patients were divided according to the_ time since last meal into two groups, those who had eaten within two hours and those where the interval between food intake and sampling was more than two. hours. When the 75 gms OGTT values was interpreted according to the WHO criteria, six cases had diabetes mellitus (an incidence of 3%) with the use of the Chi-square test, a meter value of 9.5 mmol/L was determined as the most suitable cut-off RCBG value at which the maximum x2 was obtained. The sensitivity and specificity were 100,0%. The study shows that RCBG adjusted to <2 hours after last meals may be used as a good screening

test for diabetes mellitus in our pregnant population, reducing the need for OGTT.