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About as accurate a comparison as you can get.

LittleGreyCat

LittleGreyCat

Well-Known Member
Retired Moderator
Messages
4,395
Location
Suffolk, UK
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
Dislikes
Diet drinks - the artificial sweeteners taste vile.
Having to forswear foods I have loved all my life.
Trying to find low carb meals when eating out.
I started a new batch of test strips today.

Just for the heck of it I pronged myself in an area on my finger where I usually get a very big drop of blood.

I then used my last strip of the old batch to test the blood drop, whipped it out of the meter, slipped the first of the new strips in and then re-tested the same drop of blood.

It was a big drop :-)
5-10 seconds between tests.

Results - old strip 5.0 and new strip 4.7.

I can't see how much closer I can get to a direct comparison than that.
I could re-test with two strips from the same batch at some point, but test strips don't grow on trees.

So I know that tests are approximate only, but don't (without wasteful testing) know if the strips are consistent within a batch.

Now to see if my BG control suddenly improves over the next week ;-)

Cheers

LGC
 
LittleGreyCat said:
I started a new batch of test strips today.

Just for the heck of it I pronged myself in an area on my finger where I usually get a very big drop of blood.

I then used my last strip of the old batch to test the blood drop, whipped it out of the meter, slipped the first of the new strips in and then re-tested the same drop of blood.

It was a big drop :)
5-10 seconds between tests.

Results - old strip 5.0 and new strip 4.7.

I can't see how much closer I can get to a direct comparison than that.
I could re-test with two strips from the same batch at some point, but test strips don't grow on trees.

So I know that tests are approximate only, but don't (without wasteful testing) know if the strips are consistent within a batch.

Now to see if my BG control suddenly improves over the next week ;-)

Cheers

LGC
Click to expand...

I would say .3 is not a bad difference actually. Did you do a control test at the beginning of the batch and was it different from the control test of the previous batch?

jim
 
That could be 4.85 +/- 3% if my mental arithmetic is right - no real significant difference I would say.
 
Those readings look fine, a 0.3 difference is perfectly fine as your very unlikely to get the same reading twice.
 
jim1951 said:
I would say .3 is not a bad difference actually. Did you do a control test at the beginning of the batch and was it different from the control test of the previous batch?

jim
Click to expand...

This is the first time I have tested in this way - just curiosity, really.
Although last time I changed strips I wished that I had checked because the newer batch seemed to be reading a bit higher.

I've checked back in my electronic diary (USB download from meter) and I did check a scary high reading with a second prong and strip from my previous batch. Came out as 10.6 and 10.7 on retest which in percentage terms is much closer.

Anyway, I am not worried by the difference - just checked it on impulse.

Cheers

LGC
 
I always re-test if I get a reading I either don't believe or is way out of what I was expecting. I can get differences of over a mmol/l. I then have to average them as I never know which to record.
 
I did some similar tests last week when I got a new meter - I tested both with same pack of strips and some control solution, then, like LittleGreyCat, used a big drop of blood to test both meters before & after for several meals and they were all within 0.2 of each other, so I was happy to swap over to my nice new meter, knowing that I wasn't going to see any significant change in results. Control tests were identical!

I was well impressed too...:)

Robbity
 
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