Artificial pancreas – technology that can save diabetics

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Diabetes.

We have all heard about it and probably briefly know what it is. Maybe someone in our family is affected by it or you have it. This disease is spreading in unimaginable way and we can not stop it. But what if the is a way to make diseased lives easier and not worry about checking the insulin level all the time.

 

 

It has been brought up at the Cleveland Clinic Innovations list as Number 1 medical innovation of 2018. Artificial pancreas is a system of devices that mimics the behaviour of normal pancreas in order to deliver specific hormones that are needed for the patient with diabetes at the time. Patients that this devices has been created for are type 1 diabetes patients.

The pancreas contains of a glucose monitoring system (CGM) and an insulin infusion pump. An algorithm connects the two devices to deliver continuous communication in order to monitor glucose level and adjust needed level of insulin. The pump is placed on the abdomen and measures glucose many times and does not need to be checked among the day, not like the normal finger prick, which is less efficient then the pump but also way more complicated and time-consuming.

 

“Patients still need to be aware of what their blood sugars are and what the system is doing, but we are hoping that more work and research in the field will keep moving toward wider use.”

 

A CGM is specifically responsible for measuring the level of insulin and then delivering the data to the controller which contains of control algorithm that performs a series of mathematic calculation in order to send information about dosing the insulin to the insulin pump.

 

Why only patients with type 1 diabetes?

First of all, unfortunately this device can only help minority of people living with diabetes. Approximately 5% of diseased have type 1 diabetes. What is different with type 1 and type 2 diabetes is that with type 1 diabetes, the body is not producing insulin at all. Every carbohydrate that person with type 1 diabetes eat is being broken down into blood sugar (glucose), not into insulin which is a hormone that is being produced from the glucose.

When it comes to type 2 diabetes which is the most common one, patients can treat it with pills, insulin pump or even with a good diet and exercise, so there is no use for the artificial pancreas since their body is not making enough glucose, not insulin.

 

Sources:

https://www.fda.gov/medicaldevices/productsandmedicalprocedures/homehealthandconsumer/consumerproducts/artificialpancreas/ucm259548.htm

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/tech-innovations-healthcare-2018#8

http://www.diabetes.org

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