Journal of diabetes
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It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience. The diaTribe Foundation convened a meeting on the topic of glycemic outcomes beyond HbA1c on 21 July 2017, in Bethesda (MD, USA), focusing on potential uses of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). Understanding patterns of glycemia in people with diabetes has long been a focus of approaches to improving treatment, and over the past few years this has become an available modality for clinical practice. ⋯ However, one must recognize that many commercially available SMBG instruments also fail to exhibit required accuracy, and that the indirect relationship between HbA1c and blood glucose suggests that HbA1c is at best limited in its portrayal of glycemic exposure. All these modalities play a role, but the use of CGM appears crucial to the development of better approaches to clinical treatment with multiple views allowing understanding of patterns of glycemic exposure. We look forward to further improvements in this methodology.