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Monitors

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kirstylw

Member
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I have my glucose monitor given by the hospital which always shows a high reading of my blood sugars, I went out ans bought a new machine to keep with me everywhere as its smaller bit this one shows a different reading to the other one when I tested my sugars at the same time to make sure they were both working I'm really confused what one to go by

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Different meters will show a difference in the readings due to the tolerance they have ie can be within 20%. I have several meters of the same make and these are within 0.5 of each other from the lowest to the highest reading most were only 0.1 or 0.2 apart. I then compared theses meters to another manufacture and I got similar results to the other manufacture (all these meters were new) The meters I compared were from Bayer and Abbott Medisense.

My ancient meters were about 1.0 + in the difference in readings, a control solution test showed that all the meters were in the required range of readings.

Which meters do you have as there are some that have been reported as reading high?
 

You might consider whether the hospital is expecting you to report results with the meter they gave you. If you have discussed the results with the 'free' meter at the hospital, mixing them up with those from another meter may confuse everyone. Might be better to do the 'official' switch after next visit and maybe see which meter comes closest to the hospital readings. Or, if you have mixed readings between the meters then take the average?
 
You probably should calibrate your meters.

If you contact the manufacturers they will usually send out test solutions for free. I know that Aviva do and have heard that some others will as well.

A meter should be calibrated every time you start a new batch of strips, but I don't and I suspect many others don't because it means wasting a test. I do recalibrate my meter every three to four months or if I get odd readings from a new batch of strips. Also the electronic sensors will vary over their lifespan so a meter will lose accuracy over time if not recalibrated -- something only a techie geek would know, but I am one.

In theory any meter should give a similar reading to any other meter and that's not down to the type of meter, it's whether or not they have been calibrated and are reading BG levels accurately.
 
If you want a reliable blood-sugar test - and hence, a genuinely effective test for the accuracy of your meter - I suggest you get hold of some Betachek Visual testing strips. (See my other postings.)
 

I tried this with the solution but they don't actually calibrate the meter. All they do is tell you if the meter is displaying results within an acceptable range. Quite a wide range too. I tried 2 tests with same test solution within 2 mins. One read 5.4, the other, 4.7. Quite a wide percentage range but both within tolerance according to manufacturer.
 
With the visually read testing strips, one doesn't need to calibrate anything.
 
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