INDIANAPOLIS — At the end of this month, Roche Diabetes Care plans to kick off its inaugural National Infusion Site Awareness Week.

Roche, maker of Accu-Chek diabetes management products, said it’s creating the event — which runs Aug. 30 to Sept. 5 — to increase understanding and education about proper infusion site management for the 400,000 Americans with type 1 diabetes who use an insulin pump. The company noted that it also aims to raise awareness of the complications that can result from poor site management, such as infection, poor insulin delivery, and tissue or skin damage.

To help increase education, Roche is distributing National Infusion Site Awareness Week kits to certified diabetes educators throughout the United States. The kits include an educational DVD explaining proper site maintenance, press promotional materials, fact sheets to help facilitate discussions, and collateral materials such as buttons, temporary tattoos and a logo.

For people with diabetes, the infusion site is where an insulin pump’s plastic cannula or steel needle is placed under the skin to administer insulin. Infusion site management is the practice of choosing a site, cleaning and preparing it, properly inserting a cannula or needle, monitoring insulin flow and then regularly rotating the insertion site to avoid infection. In most cases, this site must be changed every one-three days, and the same site must not be reused for about two weeks or until the site has fully healed, according to Roche.

The company cited a 2007 study in the American Diabetes Association journal Diabetes Care reporting that some adult patients experience as many as 12 issues of irritation or infection a year because of poor site maintenance.

"Roche Diabetes Care is sponsoring the first National Infusion Site Awareness Week to raise awareness of the unique challenges faced by users of insulin infusion pumps," stated Luc Vierstraete, senior vice president and general manager of Roche Diabetes Care North America. "Proper infusion site management ensures better blood glucose management as well as fewer complications. This correlation between site management and better health outcomes is why increased education is critical to foster better diabetes management."