Audit in practice : surveillance for hypoglycaemia in the neonatal paediatric intensive care unit

Hypoglycaemia in neonates is defined as a blood glucose ≤ 2.6 mmol/1. Certain categories of babies are at particularly high risk of developing hypoglycaemia in the first few days of life, and are routinely monitored in the Neonatal Paediatric Intensive Care Unit by reagent strips using a reflectance meter. This study shows that the current glucose meter, in use in the entire Department of Health, is unreliable in the detection of hypoglycaemia in neonates, but is accurate for values of blood glucose >3 mmol/1. For this reason, laboratory blood glucose estimation should be used for screening of neonatal hypoglycaemia until such time that a more reliable technique for bedside assay of blood glucose becomes available in the Neonatal Paediatric Intensive Care Unit.peer-reviewe