Monitoring blood glucose levels is a central part of managing diabetes effectively. Inadequate monitoring can put a patient at risk of both short- and long-term complications. Maintaining near normal blood glucose levels helps to prevent immediate problems such as hypoglycaemia and hyperglycaemia and longer-term microvascular complications, including retinopathy, renal disease and neuropathy. There are many different ways in which diabetes can be monitored; this article focuses on self blood glucose monitoring.
