Guidance
This guideline covers managing diabetes and its complications in women who are planning pregnancy or are already pregnant. It aims to improve the diagnosis of gestational diabetes and help women with diabetes to self-manage their blood glucose levels before and during pregnancy.
For information on related topics see our summary pages on cardiometabolic disease prevention and treatment and women's and reproductive health.
In December 2020, we reviewed the evidence and changed the recommendations on intermittently scanned continuous glucose monitoring (isCGM, commonly referred to as 'flash') and real-time CGM (rtCGM) during pregnancy for women with type 1 diabetes.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- preconception planning and care
- diagnosing and managing gestational diabetes
- antenatal care
- intrapartum care
- neonatal care
- postnatal care, including ongoing blood glucose testing for women who have had gestational diabetes
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals
- Commissioners and providers
- Women with diabetes who are planning a pregnancy or are pregnant and women at risk of, or diagnosed with, gestational diabetes
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline updates and replaces NICE guideline CG63 (published March 2008).
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.