Thank goodness for some media sources. In this, I first have to thank Tom Ross at Not Medicated Yet for his blog and alerting me to this study. Tom links to American Diabetes Association Care section and when I asked, he told me about a medscape article. Further research uncovered the same article at Reuters Health without the spelling error Tom had so much fun with.
If it was not for these two sources, many of us may have missed something important that the ADA wants to keep out of sight for us patients and many doctors will also miss. This subject needs wide distribution and press so that more people will become aware of the proper procedures for hand care before blood glucose testing. Do not expect ADA to say much about this as hand cleaning procedures recommended by the study goes against meter manufacturers recommendations.
First, this is just another reason to not use alcohol swabs, they proved in this study that they are ineffective and do not prevent erroneous readings even with use five times. Washing with tap water is the recommendation of the study. Nothing was said about warm or cold water as well no mention was made of using soap. I personally use warm water and soap and not alcohol swabs which can severely dry and crack your fingers.
Tom covers the facts of the study, so please read his blog of February 11, 2011. Then take time to read the Reuters Health article here. Then think about contacting ADA and asking for them to make the study more public. Studies like this that affect us, the patients, needs to be made public and not hidden from patients and requiring a fee of $45 to see.
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