Intravascular Continuous Glucose Monitoring from InvivoSense

We’ve featured continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices on Medgadget before, but they had the disadvantage of being subcutaneous, and it’s unclear how long the subcutaneous reading takes to catch up to the actual blood glucose level.
A new device from InvivoSense, a company based in Norway, is inserted through a central line port and measures, in real-time, the glucose concentration in the blood. This could help us to more accurately study the effect of “tight” vs. “permissive” glucose control. The studies so far on this subject have been contradictory, and part of the reason may be that glucose is normally measured only hourly at the most.
The sensor uses a new technological approach based on the shrinking and swelling of a boronic acid–incorporated hydrogel when exposed to various glucose concentrations. This device was validated in the January 2011 issue of Anesthesiology, and it showed remarkable correlation with the gold standard methods.
Image: Biosensor comprising Smart-Gel Tip bonded to fibre-optic.
InvivioSense homepage…
Abstract in Anesthesiology: Continuous measurement of blood glucose: validation of a new intravascular sensor.