Evaluation of a home kit blood glucose monitoring device

A blood glucose monitoring device, the Diascan, is commonly used in Trinidad and Tobago. A prospective study was conducted to examine the accuracy of a Diascan unit in measuring blood glucose levels in or capillary venous blood of patients in a hospital ward. The Diascan measurements were compared to those from two laboratories which independently measured the venous blood or the venous plasma glucose levels. Although there was reasonably good correlation between measurements from the two laboratories (r = 0.85) results from the Diascan showed poor correlations with those from the laboratories, with Pearson's correlation coefficients ranging from 0.32 to 0.64. An error grid analysis showed that the Diascan measurements would have resulted in inappropriate decisions relating to treatment regimens in 26% of cases. The results suggest that, when crucial decisions have to be made with respect to patients' blood glucose levels, it may be risky to rely solely on measurements from the Diascan.