CLINICAL-EVALUATION OF THE BLOOD-GLUCOSE METERS ACCUTREND, COMPANION-2, GLUCOMETER-3, AND ONE-TOUCH-II AS COMPARED WITH THE REFERENCE GLUCOSE-OXIDASE METHOD

New small, light-weight and fast-acting meters for measuring blood glu cose have been developed recently. To determine their accuracy and pre cision we compared Accutrend, Companion 2, Glucometer 3 and One Touch II with the reference glucose oxidase method. For determination of acc uracy 150 measurements were performed on two meters of each brand, tog ether with measurement on the Beckman 2 Analyzer, which served as our reference. Capillary blood samples were obtained from patients with ty pe 1 and type 2 diabetes attending our outpatient clinic. All measurem ents were performed by one experienced technician. Precision in series was determined by 15 measurements of venous EDTA samples. The coeffic ient of variance was used for statistical analysis. Accuracy was evalu ated according to recommendations of the American Diabetes Association and clinically useful criteria such as the error grid analysis. We fo und that One Touch II performed best overall, followed by Accutrend. C ompanion 2 and Glucometer 3 showed higher deviations in both accuracy and precision, but nonetheless met the clinical criteria of accuracy a nd reliability measured by error grid analysis in 87% and 90.5% of mea surements, respectively. In conclusion, all four blood glucose meters can safely be used, after proper training, by patients and medical sta ff for self-measurement of blood glucose.