Difference in BG from different fingers!

The thing I am always somewhat bemused by is that if meters are only 20% accurate - what is the point of having a decimal point in the answer - surely this is meaningless if the result is (say) 1-3 mmol/l + or - from the actual reading.... What do others think?

Is that figure correct, I would of expected it to be much better than that........

I suppose in some ways the decimal point couild be ommited, or at leat to the .5, but for a lot of people, in order to get good control over there blood sugras they need to get it as accurate as possible, im finding thats what I require, to the extent what i really need is a pump.

The figure of 20% is from the operator who spoke to me when I rang Abbott - the makers, given that they make machines that are inaccurate - the information they give out could equally be 20% out, where that leave's us I have no idea.

I was surprised when she told me that they were allowed - with no penalty, to be so inaccurate, but there we have it - it is only an indication not a set in stone absolute.

I think you are missing the point a bit here. They have never claimed the meters are 100% accurate and indeed I think it is almost impossible
for them to be 100% accurate. I think people trust too much in medical advances and think anything can be done nowadays. There is also the fact that your BG reading in your hand doesn't necessarily reflect that in the rest of your body.
It is an estimate, nothing more, intended to aid your control. I suspect it will never be 100% accurate but compare it to urine strips which many of the people I know remember and you realise how lucky we are ;-)

Hear, hear!

Even if we have the 20%, I don't know about you guys, but I've yet to find it that big of an issue while seeking great control.
Having some rough indication is better than no indication at all after all!

Having used a one touch ultra for maybe 8 years now (I have 3 of them between work, home and my car) I feel that even if the meters werent that accurate, I know that when I start feeling the signs of a hypo, I will most likely read 3.5 to 4.0 on my meters. That for me is more than adequate.

I suppose that if I used a variety of meters when testing throughout the course of a day (bfast, car drive to work, car to clients, lunch, car to clients, car drive home, dinner time, before bed - probably 10 tests a day) that I am just adding another factor into differing readings.

Best to keep as many things stable as possible for better control.

The one thing I find affects my readings more than anything else is my 2 sweetheart children at home. After eating at 6pm I may get 2 hours of playing, rolling around on the floor, dancing etc, whereas other nights they may watch a film and we do nothing. Its the difference between a hypo around 8pm and a high reading before bed after I have topped myself up (then correcting in the morning) or a 6mmol and a great start to the next day!

I've been a one touch ultra user for some years too. I've changed meter a couple of times but both times the new meters gave consistently higher readings than my "old" one touch. This was a real issue with the last change when I was getting hypo symptoms but the meter was showing readings above 4.5. Testing with my one touch gave me readings consistent with my syptoms, so I went back to the old faithful.

That's not to say the one touch is wondeful or entirely consistent. On a couple of occasions when I've had unexpectedly high readings (above 13), thinking I might have made some kind of mistake I've re-tested immediately using the same finger and got a reading of up to 2mmols different to the original reading.

Stew