Selfmonitoring of Type 1 Diabetes mellitus in adolescents

Type 1 diabetes mellitus is a chronic, lifelong disease. The younger the patient, the more seriously the disease affects his (her) childhood. The disease brings about a lot of changes, it involves the loss of freedom and independence. Diabetes makes the normal troubles of adolescence even more difficult. Adolescence is a hard stage of life for patients with the type 1 diabetes mellitus because it is a period when the compensation of diabetes is more difficult than in the previous and following stages of life. Regular self-monitoring is one of the crucial tasks. The selfmonitoring is important for the overall compensation of diabetes and also for the clinical results of treatment. Self-monitoring is the process of monitoring and measurement of one´s own glycemia and ketones in blood and sugar and ketones in urine. It enables the diabetic patient a better orientation in the disease and a certain level of independence. Self-monitoring helps parents gain confidence in cure of their children suffering from diabetes. The theoretical part of my thesis deals with the questions of the type 1 diabetes mellitus and the method of self-monitoring. The objective of the practical part was to survey the subjective view of adolescents with the type 1 diabetes mellitus on self-monitoring and the level of their self-reliance. I set hypotheses suggesting that adolescents perceive self-monitoring to be uncomfortable and cannot cope with the procedures independently. These hypotheses were not confirmed in my research. To get relevant data, I used the questionnaire method. I handed out questionnaires to young patients with diabetes aged 13{--}18 years. A letter for patients´ parents asking for their written consent with the research was attached to the questionnaire