I have
type 2 diabetes, and
am a chartered engineer with a reasonable grounding in
control electronics.
With reference to the concept of trading your meter for a new one. This is common practice — I have held on
to my older meter. I have also been given two other
meters from the same company free! The interesting thing is, that using blood from
the same finger prick onto the test strips of all meters gives a wide range
of readings!
I found this very odd indeed.
I rang the company, and spoke to
their technical customer services person. When I told
them about the wide discrepancy in readings between the monitors, she said
the reason is that each meter works with a difference design philosophy.
I explained to her that should make no difference at all — since the
outputted readings all share a common measurement unit. I got nowhere with
her. I asked what was the standard of accuracy these meters were supposed to
be within — I received an answer of 20% — which again I find ridiculous. I
would be obliged if you could please throw some light on this subject.
Obviously from my tests results — the accuracy must be very poor!
Answer
Please see my article, "Precision Comes before Accuracy." It
is now online at
http://www.mendosa.com/precision.htm.
dm
There are many factors that are involved in generating the readings that you see displayed on your meters: age of the test strips,
quality of the circuitry built into the machine, type of device (i.e., does it read glucose oxidase levels optically
or electrically). As a consequence, it has become a common practice (for better or worse) to accept
20% variation in readings between two meters as acceptable. After all, these
are frequently free devices, not $50,000 laboratory machines.
See
How Accurate Is Your Meter?
and
Performance Goals for Glucose Meters.
Your biggest problem, I would suspect, is whether to use one or two or three of your meters. I'd suggest you talk it over with a diabetes educator (and bring in
all three meters so you and the educator can decide which meters would be best for you to use).
wwq
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