I am trying to get information on Dexcom but the website says you have to be 18 to use it. Do they make something for kids?
That's... interesting. A writer I used to work with has his 7-yr-old using one. I don't think they did anything underhanded to get him onto it. At least he never mentioned he had to do any subterfuge.
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We have children in the local school system as young as 6 with cgm's
It's only FDA approved for people 18 and over, but that doesn't mean it can't be prescribed by your doctor. My son is 12 and has been wearing it since he was 9. We love it. It's one of the most useful diabetes tools we have. We did have to send in scientific studies (JDRF had a couple that were helpful) to our insurance company to prove it would actually be helpful for someone under 18 because they denied our first request based on age. But it's definitely a kid friendly device!
Our daughter is 8 and started the DexCom earlier this year. As I was inquiring to the company about it I was told that it's not currently FDA approved for children under 18, but they fully support any pediatric patient who's physician prescribes it.
That it's not FDA approved for kids is because they didn't include a study of kids when they submitted it to the FDA originally. I read recently that they are doing pediatric trials for their next gen system. So presumably it will be FDA approved for kids when it comes to market.
We quickly got ours approved by insurance. We had to submit lots of supporting paperwork including 3 months of BG logs, what the highest and lowest BG's were in the previous month (our lowest was 39 if I recall!), and the numbers of lows in that period.
We are really enjoying having the information that DexCom provides us.
Yes, it's because of FDA approval. They are not allowed to talk to you about it unless you have an "off label" prescription from your doctor. If they even give you basic info, it is considered to be marketing to you for use by a child and FDA gets pretty touchy about that. I was happy to have a nice discussion with a rep at a show who "didn't talk to me" about it for a good 20 minutes. LOL. My 6 yr old daughter has been wearing the Dex for 1 1/2 yrs.