Comparison of various methods of blood sugar screening in newborn infants

We evaluated two reagent strips, Dextrostix and Chemstrip-BG, and the reflectance meter technique, Stat-tek Photometer, in the screening of blood sugar values in newborn infants at high risk and compared them with laboratory glucose determination using an automatic analyzer (glucose oxidase method). The visual inspection provided by the Chemstrip-BG was the best screening method and correlated best with laboratory blood sugar concentrations, with a correlation coefficient of 0.885. This value was statistically better than for Dextrostix (r = 0.797) and Stat-tek (r = 0.777). When we compared the blood sugar values less than 50 mg/dl, the correlation coefficient for Stat-tek was 0.670, which was not statistically different than for Dextrostix (r = 0.502); Chemstrip-BG correlated best with true glucose values (r = 0.843). We believe that Chemstrip-BG is more accurate and technically easier to perform than either Dextrostix or Stat-tek.