bizzilizzi
Member
- Messages
- 7
- Type of diabetes
- Parent
- Treatment type
- Insulin
Hi,
So I'm a parent of a wonderfully resilient 8-year-old girl diagnosed six-months ago and several times we've had significant differences in blood glucose results taken within just a minute or so of each other. (Definitely nothing to do with sugary fingers!)
I've been reading up about the variation that you can get with meters and it's a bit terrifying to be honest. And the small print that says "system accuracy results for glucose concentrations ≥5.55mmol/L within +/- 5%: 64.9% accurate" etc. So, correct me if I'm wrong, but that basically means that for levels above 5.5 the chance that it is out by more than 5% is 35.1%? From what I understand, the higher the level the more potential variation there is in the test result also?
So is it normal/acceptable for a meter to read 16.7 followed by 11.4 a minute later? (The meter is the Freestyle Optium Neo).
Bearing in mind that she has a Libre, which is what we usually use, except when we want to double-check (because we're told "the meter is more accurate"). This time the Libre read 14.8 dropping sharply, and I recall the good doctor told us that the arrow pointing straight down means the BG is dropping 1mmol/L per 5 minutes. All this was checked within the space of 2-3 minutes.
Another question: we were also told not to use the Libre for finger-prick tests but not why, and from my reading of the leaflet provided within the strips box the two meters (Optium Neo and Libre) have exactly the same level of accuracy for this.
So it seems to me a bit pointless to be trusting the meter to give us a more accurate reading than the Libre (and yes, I understand the time-lag between blood and interstitial fluid). Is there anything we can trust or is it just always going to be feeling our way in the dark like this?!
Thanks for any advice!
Lizzi
PS. the previous two times we'e had significantly different readings were 1.8 (obviously inaccurate) followed by 4.something and 10 versus 6.
So I'm a parent of a wonderfully resilient 8-year-old girl diagnosed six-months ago and several times we've had significant differences in blood glucose results taken within just a minute or so of each other. (Definitely nothing to do with sugary fingers!)
I've been reading up about the variation that you can get with meters and it's a bit terrifying to be honest. And the small print that says "system accuracy results for glucose concentrations ≥5.55mmol/L within +/- 5%: 64.9% accurate" etc. So, correct me if I'm wrong, but that basically means that for levels above 5.5 the chance that it is out by more than 5% is 35.1%? From what I understand, the higher the level the more potential variation there is in the test result also?
So is it normal/acceptable for a meter to read 16.7 followed by 11.4 a minute later? (The meter is the Freestyle Optium Neo).
Bearing in mind that she has a Libre, which is what we usually use, except when we want to double-check (because we're told "the meter is more accurate"). This time the Libre read 14.8 dropping sharply, and I recall the good doctor told us that the arrow pointing straight down means the BG is dropping 1mmol/L per 5 minutes. All this was checked within the space of 2-3 minutes.
Another question: we were also told not to use the Libre for finger-prick tests but not why, and from my reading of the leaflet provided within the strips box the two meters (Optium Neo and Libre) have exactly the same level of accuracy for this.
So it seems to me a bit pointless to be trusting the meter to give us a more accurate reading than the Libre (and yes, I understand the time-lag between blood and interstitial fluid). Is there anything we can trust or is it just always going to be feeling our way in the dark like this?!
Thanks for any advice!
Lizzi
PS. the previous two times we'e had significantly different readings were 1.8 (obviously inaccurate) followed by 4.something and 10 versus 6.