Facts about glucose meters and their errors
Glucose meters and other diabetes supplies are now helping
people all around the world. If you don't know, diabetes is
nowadays the sixth cause of death in the U.S. Over 18 million
people in the U.S. have diabetes. This is 6% of the country's
population. So, there is an important percentage of people that
need glucose meters and diabetes care.
Diabetes happens when the body cannot produce enough insulin or
when the insulin that is produced in the pancreas cannot work
effectively. When it is not well control (by the use of glucose
meters and other diabetes supplies) it can cause grave
complications and even premature death. But the good news is
that you can now control diabetes with the help of personal
glucose meters.
Glucose meters are diabetes supplies that are used to check and
monitor the blood glucose level. The glucose meters can always
show you the concentration of glucose in your blood and let you
know when you will have to have an insulin dose. They can even
help in the adjustment of insulin doses. But, like almost
everything on the Earth, glucose meters are not really perfect.
Quality specifications for glucose meters allow now results to
be in error by 5-10% (or even more) of the true concentration.
So, for the glucose meters that have a total analytical error of
5%, dosage errors will me somewhere in 8-23% of insulin doses.
If the analytical error of some glucose meters is bigger, the
dosage errors will be bigger (for example for 10% total error
you have 16-45% dosage error). This is why people with diabetes
should have all the information needed about how their glucose
meters work (for lowering or rising the insulin dosage by 1-2%
depending on the meter) in order to have a good 90-95% insulin
dosage.