Saturday, January 15, 2011

I am a type 2 diabetic. Can you tell me how accurate are devices for home glucose monitoring?


Monitoring of blood glucose at home is now widely practiced and accepted by most patients. Everyone agrees that home monitoring of glucose can help make management of diabetes a lot easier. However, there are a variety of home monitoring devices out on the market and choosing the right one is an overwhelming task for the average consumer.
Unlike laboratory measurement of blood glucose, the home devices have a wide range of accuracy. In fact, not all home glucose monitoring machines are the same when it comes to accuracy. The FDA calls for all blood glucose monitors to produce results within 20% of a reference measurement and there is hope that the newer generation of machines will result in only a 10% difference. The American Diabetes Association has gone one step further and demanded that all meters should produce readings within 5% of reference level. All the meters currently on the market do comply by FDA standard but they are not as accurate as the laboratory machine.  If you live in North America, do not buy machines from abroad as the quality of devices cannot be guaranteed

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