Costs for blood glucose meters should be reimbursed by health insurance companies

Reimbursement for blood glucose meters required for pregnant women

Gestational diabetes is one of the most common complications of pregnancy. The illness can have an impairing effect on the later life of mother and child. Essential for therapy is the regular review of maternal blood glucose levels. But the patients still do not receive blood glucose meters from their health insurance. That should change, health experts demand.

Health risk for child and mother

Diabetes is one of the most common comorbidities in pregnancy. Not or inadequately treated, the so-called gestational diabetes (GDM) for both the expectant mother and the unborn child is an increased health risk. Essential for the therapy is the regular review of maternal blood sugar levels. However, the patients still do not get their blood glucose meters reimbursed by their health insurance companies. Health experts are therefore calling again for the costs to be covered.

Gestational diabetes is one of the most common pregnancy complications. To treat the condition, it is important to check your blood glucose regularly. According to experts, the costs for the measuring devices required for this are to be borne by the health insurances. (Image: Halfpoint / fotolia.com)

Regular check of blood glucose levels

Each year more than 40,000 pregnant women develop diabetes mellitus.

In gestational diabetes, the blood sugar of the mother is either constantly or even unusually long after meals increased. The high amount of sugar goes directly to the baby, which is oversupplied.

It often grows too fast, and its metabolism sets itself before the birth of the constant carbohydrate oversupply.

Among other things, this may affect the development of the heart and lungs of the child.

For the mother, the gestational diabetes is a risk.

Cash registers should make blood glucose meters reimbursed

"Patients with gestational diabetes are a very sensitive patient clientele," explains the President of the German Diabetes Association (DDG), Professor Dr. med. med. Dirk Müller-Wieland, in a communication.

"Not only the health of the unborn child depends on an optimal blood sugar control of the mother," said the expert.

"Also possible serious pregnancy and birth complications as well as a later type 2 diabetes of the mother can develop from a bad blood sugar adjustment."

The DDG again calls on the GKV Spitzenverband to make blood glucose meters for patients with GDM subject to reimbursement, so that each affected person can control their blood sugar metabolism regularly without their own cost participation.

This is also the guideline for GDM, which the DDG has updated together with the German Society for Gynecology and Obstetrics (DGGG) this year.

Normalize your metabolism with a lifestyle change

Already last year, the DDG suggested including blood glucose meters for pregnant women with GDM in the aid catalog (product group 21) of the GKV Spitzenverband - regardless of whether the GDM is treated with insulin or not.

"From a medical or health economic point of view, it is understandable that blood glucose meters will still not be reimbursed at GDM," emphasizes Müller-Wieland. "We see a clear risk potential for affected mothers and their children."

The guideline-appropriate treatment initially envisages normalizing the metabolism with a lifestyle change.

"In order to adjust meals and physical activity according to the metabolic needs, expectant mothers should regularly check their blood sugar levels using a blood glucose meter," emphasizes Professor Dr. med. med. Baptist Gallwitz, spokesman for the DDG.

"This is the basic requirement to be able to recognize a deterioration in the values ​​and any necessary insulin therapy in good time." This is, moreover, an internationally defined standard.

In some cases, pregnant women have to inject insulin

In about 80 percent of the cases can be avoided with good metabolism self-control and improved lifestyle with a healthy diet and exercise sufficient insulin therapy during pregnancy.

"It is therefore simply negligent for the GKV Spitzenverband to deny this patient group the basic prerequisite for a healthy and complication-free pregnancy," criticizes Gallwitz.

Only when lifestyle measures are no longer sufficient to prevent high blood sugar levels does pregnant women have to inject insulin.

The indication for insulin, however, results from the self-measured and recorded values ​​of pregnant women. Without self-measurements, necessary insulin treatments can be overlooked.

Increased risk of type 2 diabetes and overweight

Patients with gestational diabetes and their unborn children face enormous health risks during and after pregnancy.

For example, women with GDM are at an increased risk for hypertension, edema, kidney disease, depression during and after pregnancy, cardiovascular disease and chronic urinary tract infections.

Finally, the risk of recurrent gestational diabetes in subsequent pregnancies and type 2 diabetes increases within the next decade.

The child has the following health risks: premature birth with transfer to the children's hospital, a high birth weight, which often results in caesarean section or birth injuries of the mother and child during vaginal delivery and finally an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and obesity.

"Due to severe complications and possible damages to the mother and her child, the health system is much more burdened than by a reimbursement of the measuring device with appropriate test strips," adds Müller-Wieland.

Number of women with gestational diabetes has risen sharply

In the past 15 years, the number of women with gestational diabetes has risen sharply in Germany - from just under 1.5 to about 5.4 percent of all pregnancies.

This is shown by studies that take up the updated DDG guideline on GDM.

"The cause of these increased numbers is on the one hand the improved diagnostics", explains Müller-Wieland the development. "On the other hand, however, the number of high-risk patients is also increasing significantly: high age and obesity promote increased blood sugar levels of the expectant mother."

Other risk factors include familial diabetes and a previous pregnancy with GDM. In addition, recent studies show that vitamin D deficiency as well as pregnant women's sleep apnea may also increase the risk and that gestational diabetes is more prevalent in women who expect a male child.

Patients with gestational diabetes can obtain comprehensive information about diagnosis and therapy with the help of the likewise updated Patient Guideline GDM. (Ad)