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New BG meter confusion!

hale710

hale710

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,903
Location
Scotland
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
I've taken up running recently. I was sent the contour USB meter for free so I decided to use that as my meter to take out with me as its smaller. I generally prefer my Freestyle Optium meter as it tests for ketones too, but it's a bit big.

I decided to do a check on the readings, the same large drop of blood.

Freestyle optium - 7.4 mmol/l
Contour USB - 5.4 mmol/l

That's a huge difference! Has anyone come across such a large gap before? When running I'm so incredibly unfit I worry I won't notice a hypo, but if the contour USB is reading low I may end up treating something unnecessarily.

Or if my freestyle optium is reading high maybe I'm legally too low when getting in the car etc?

Minefield!
 
I found some results differed by 3.0 when changing from my One Touch Ultra to a Gluomen LX Plus. Which is a huge difference and could mean an insulin dose change of up to 4units for me depending on circumstances. I would expect small differences, but one as large as that was too much and I regularly have no hypo warning symptoms till my levels are below 2.4.... so could have ended up treating hypos when sugars could have actually been 3.0 higher than the reading on the meter.

Both meters were apparently performing fine when checked with their solutions. I ended up sticking the new one in the cupboard to use purely as a ketone test meter if/when I should need it.

I've since got a iBG Star and it's never been any more that 0.5 of a difference from my old meter; which is perfectly acceptable. You could get that on the same meter testing the same sample twice.
 
Precisely! I didn't expect it to be spot in, but at least vaguely the same!

The freestyle is the one they use at my local hospital so I'm inclined to stick with that. It means having to lug it around while I run, but I think I'd rather be confident in the readings I'm getting than having to 2nd guess the meters margin of error!
 
I use the Contour USB meters having previously used the Accu-Chek ones, I did compare the two when I first got the USB and didn't find that much of a difference in the readings :?

Might be worthwhile doing a control solution test.
 
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