This month’s OneTouchGold features an article about trusting your glucometer. Most of us have experienced numbers that didn’t seem right, or retested to find the number a lot higher or a lot lower than the previous test.
According to OneTouch, “A meter reading is considered accurate when it is within 20% of a laboratory measurement.”
Really? 20%? As someone with type 2 I find that frustrating enough. If my blood sugar is actually 100 mg/dL it can read anywhere from 80 to 120? Isn’t it hard to know how well you’re doing if the range is that much? But if I was correcting with insulin – how in the world would I know how much to take? If my blood sugar is 250 mg/dL that would give me a range of 200 to 300! That’s a huge difference for figuring corrections!
They gave a couple hints to improve accuracy – like wash your hands before testing. Lotions on your skin can screw up the test.
I’m still reeling from 20%.
It is that bad eh? wow, nuts is what it is. Maybe one should take five samples from each hand, and average the result or something (just kidding honest)
By: TheDarkWraith on September 7, 2007
at 2:47 pm
Temperature changes readings too ! DS and I both have old monitors,(I only test now and then).They are only 10 % more out than lab tests.The new monitors (DS has a few of them too) are all metric up here and often up to 15 % out,but not always.Some brands/models of monitors are more accurate than others.
By: schnuckiputz on September 7, 2007
at 9:43 pm