Children, teens prefer forearm glucose testing

One reason why diabetes is often not well controlled in young people is their dislike of regular finger pricks to test glucose levels in their blood. Researchers now say that getting a blood sample from the forearm is an acceptable, and usually less painful, alternative to finger pricks for young patients.

Non-compliance with blood glucose monitoring is especially common among adolescent diabetics, the researchers explain in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, but using an alternative, less painful site for sampling might improve adherence to their testing schedule.

Dr. D. A. Price and colleagues from Royal Manchester Children's Hospital, UK collected opinions on forearm and finger-prick sampling from 46 children and adolescents with diabetes mellitus and their parents.

Blood glucose measurements were quite similar for forearm and finger samples, the team reports, though the variability was somewhat greater with forearm than with finger-prick measurement.

"There was a tendency for the blood glucose measure to be lower when sampling from the forearm," the investigators write, "but no value fell into clinically unacceptable areas."

Nearly 60 percent of children said that finger-prick testing was a problem that stopped them from testing when they should, the report indicates, with 37 percent reporting that it hurt.

More than 60 percent of children said that forearm sampling was painless and only 6 percent said it was more painful than finger-prick sampling, the researchers note. More than half the children (55 percent) thought forearm testing would improve their compliance with recommended blood glucose monitoring.

More than three quarters of children and their parents found the forearm testing device to be convenient to use, the results indicate, though many of them said the device was too large.

"This study has shown that forearm sampling for blood glucose testing is acceptable to children and adolescents and seems to be preferred," the authors conclude.

"Children felt this technique did not hurt as much as the others," Price told Reuters Health. However, it is not clear "how good the glycemic control is, whether there is any benefit."

SOURCE: Archives of Disease in Childhood, June 2004.