2

I'm in the process of preparing a short lecture on hypoglycemia. In the process, I discovered that blood glucose levels can be expressed in the measurement of millimoles per liter or milligrams per deciliter.

I did find one question here on Medical Sciences S.E. that was related to this. However, it doesn't completely answer the question I'm about to ask. I have tried to research this using Google but didn't come across any resources that were helpful in answering the following...

Are there any countries that exclusively use mmol/l or mg/dl? If there are, what countries are these?

I'm wondering if this is a similar situation to the US vs most other countries. The US still uses the English units of measure - inches, pounds, Fahrenheit - while most other countries use the metric system.

The related question here on S.E. did answer my question about why this system is used at times. But I wasn't able to find anything there about what other countries do or don't use it.

| improve this question | |
  • 1
    "The US still uses the English units of measure." ummm....some of us English people use imperial measurements as a preference but a lot of professions use metric in an official sense much to the annoyance of those who can only visualize in imperial measurements. – Chris Rogers Jul 22 '19 at 19:29
  • 2
    Welcome back ^^. I haven‘t actually seen anyone use mmol/l here in Germany, but my experience is solely limited to hospital capillary glucose tests (always in mg/dl) and lab tests (so far I‘ve solely seen them in mg/dl). However, it is pretty hard to prove that either version is the only used measurement in a country/region... – Narusan Jul 22 '19 at 20:36
  • Personally I've always seen mg/dl in the US (probably the only context anyone ever talks about a deciliter of anything) - do you see mmol/L?; as Narusan said, easier to prove both are used than to prove one is not. – Bryan Krause Jul 22 '19 at 22:12
  • 2
    I've never seen mmol/l used anywhere in clinical medicine in the US. The only place I've seen it is research articles, which are by nature international. I think the US is an example of a country that uses mg/dl exclusively, but I don't know how to prove it because it requires proving something doesn't exist, which is nigh impossible. – Carey Gregory♦ Jul 23 '19 at 5:04
  • 1
    @L.B. No offence was taken :-) I was just pointing something out which you may not have been aware of. – Chris Rogers Jul 23 '19 at 13:28

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.