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Are control solutions worth bothering with

borderter

borderter

Well-Known Member
Messages
640
Location
Gloucestershire
Type of diabetes
Treatment type
Insulin
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Diabetes! Celebrities and curry
Just trialing the new sanofi meter ,checked my post breakfast blood and wow 17.5 so rechecked with my usual accuchek expert meter and 12.3
Did the control solution on sanofi meter and its 7.6 then looked at acceptable range 5 to 9 but is that range too big to have any accuracy
 
Well the control test has proved that the meter is operating within its designed tolerance. It's actually quite close to the centre of the range (7.0) so on that particular control test it was within 9% of centre. At least you know it's not broken.

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yikes, what a difference, so how are we (especially if you are insulin dependant and have to medically compensate for bg) supposed to know which is right?
 
Andy12345 said:
yikes, what a difference, so how are we (especially if you are insulin dependant and have to medically compensate for bg) supposed to know which is right?
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You don't lol ! That's the trouble. Carb counting is not an exact science, and the meters can be 20% out ! No wonder some people struggle !
 
They are supposed to be +/- 20% out less than about 5% of the time. Most of the time they are more accurate than that. If you get an odd result you can always retest. I guess you could run 20 control tests and plot them on a scatter graph, or calculate the standard deviation, to be sure. In general I think for practical purposes we can trust our equipment.

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Split the middle between those two values and that's still only +/- 20% of the half way point.

When someone gets a weird result, the first thing they should do is wash hands and retest on the same meter, not a different one. Then if the odd result is consistent then maybe try a different meter. Maybe a retest on the Sanofi would have shown 13.0.

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Spiker hands well washed so not the problem and yes as insulin dependant did wonder whether to do a correction bolus but decided to sit tight and see what the pre lunch one was in 1.5 hours time then ......6.0 so good job didnt have extra insulin.
You just cant get bored with the big D can you as its always changing LOL
 
A good technique when trialling a new meter is to use old and new side by side for a week. Take a reading on each one each time you test. Don't be too worried with individual differences but look for trends over the whole week.

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Get a blood test done. Ask nurse whether it ok if you do a blood test at the same time ( in your case on both meters).. Then when you get blood result back, check which one was the nearest....

That way you will know which one matches your main artery blood....


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You need to use some of the blood from the sample to check especially if it's not a fasting test.
Fingertip capillary readings are just a bit higher than venous blood when fasting but after meals the difference is much greater. One test using an OGTT found that at 30 min the venous blood was on average 115.5 mg/dl whereas the fingertip sample was 163mg/dl, at 2hours the venous was 72mg/dl and the fingertip was 102mg/dl
 
Good point Phoenix. My hospital uses fingertip blood for the random BG and the HBA1c, so it's a good way to check my meter.
 
yikes, what a difference, so how are we (especially if you are insulin dependant and have to medically compensate for bg) supposed to know which is right?
Click to expand...
Simply put, it doesn't matter when BG is that high (there are too many factors to account for for a perfect correction dose taking you from 17 mmol/l to 5.0 mmol/l to work). Remember, the error gets smaller as BG gets lower.
 
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