As part of the editorial, co-authors Andrew Cornish and Dr. H. Peter Chase, from the University of Colorado Denver, detail the story of a 16-year-old girl who was told to wear her insulin pump through a full-body scanner by the TSA, and was advised to disconnect the pump by the manufacturer, because they couldn’t be sure whether or not damage had occurred as a result of the X-ray exposure.
According to Cornish and Chase you should carry a letter that details all of the medical supplies someone with diabetes needs to carry on board with them, specifically stating that your insulin pump or continuous glucose monitors shouldn’t be subjected to any X-rays, and should be hand-checked instead. This is because these devices, which include insulin pumps made by Medtronic, Animas and Tandem Diabetes Care, use direct current motor technology. There is currently only one FDA-approved insulin pump that doesn’t use direct current motor technology, which is the OmniPod by Insulet that uses shape-memory alloy wire technology, and the company say this isn’t affected by X-ray exposure.
The advice laid out by Cornish and Chase has been approved by Dr. Tracy Breen, a director of diabetes care for North Shore-LIJ Health System in New York, who says ‘I always recommend that people living with diabetes travel with a letter from their doctor stating their diagnosis of diabetes, what their travel needs are and what supplies they are travelling with’. She went on to advise that you follow the manufacturer’s recommendations, ‘Since we really don’t know what can happen to an insulin pump or [continuous glucose monitoring] device when it is passed through an imaging device’.
‘It’s also important for people and their doctors to be well versed in Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) guidelines and to consider incorporating those guidelines into the text of their travel letter,’ Breen Added.