Thursday, August 18th, 2011 at
11:12 am
Recently switched from a whole-blood meter to a plasma meter, and it’s driving me nuts.
I understand that plasma readings are about 15% higher than whole-blood readings, so I’m not freaked out by the higher readings.
But is it normal for plasma meters to give results as much as 15 points different on subsequent tests?
For instance, I can test 2 hr post-prandial and have a reading of 120, test again two minutes later, and have a reading of 105. I KNOW my glucose isn’t dropping that quickly, and it’s not making me very confident in the accuracy of this meter.
I should add that the meter has the right code chip for the test strips; that I did test using the test solution and received appropriate results, and that I always test my blood at standard room temperature with clean, dry hands.
Thanks, Anita. Neither of my previous meters ever showed more than 1-2 points variation on retests, so it seemed unusual to me. But I guess this one just has a wider margin of error.
The 15-point difference isn’t that great in the grand scheme of things, but since I try very hard to keep tight control, it does throw me off somewhat.
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