ReliOn Confirm inaccurate readings

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srh4601

srh4601

Member Since 2018
Hello everyone,
I just purchased a ReliOn Confirm meter at Walmart yesterday and used it for the first time this morning at the vet's office. They first performed a blood glucose test on my cat, Boo, and their reading came out 407. Then we checked Boo with the ReliOn Confirm and his readings were 277, 285, and 285 again. My vet told me I could continue using the ReliOn meter if I choose and just to add 122 to his readings each time. Does this sound like accurate advice? Are his numbers so different on my meter because it is a human meter? Any help appreciated! Thanks!
 
All meters are allowed to have a 20% variance

So that 407 could really be as low as 325

And the 285 could really be as high as 342

See how those two numbers relate to each other?

The human meter is always going to read lower than the pet meter, but the protocols we use here were written with human meters so they work fine.

"Pet" meters are fairly new.....before they were around, everybody who home tested used human meters
 
There really isn't a way to convert pet meter readings to human meters. I'm sure your vet means well, but their advice could be dangerous in a hypo situation. What's important to know is that human meters generally read a bit lower than pet meters and the "take action" number on a human meter is 50, whereas on a pet meter it's 68.
 
srh4601 said:
My vet told me I could continue using the ReliOn meter if I choose and just to add 122 to his readings each time. Does this sound like accurate advice?
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This is not accurate advice.

I am assuming here that your vet used a pet-calibrated meter and compared his readings to the readings taken on your Relion meter.

When using a pet meter to measure a cat's BG you need to use a reference range specific to the pet meter.

When using a human meter to measure a cat's BG you need to use a reference range specific to human meters.

There's no mix 'n' match.

There is no, repeat NO, linear correlation between pet BG meter values and human meter values. Indeed, the lower the BG level the less difference there is between them. The closest mathematical relationship between the two is one of percentage. A pet meter will read higher by a percentage value. Therefore the lower the BG reading the smaller the difference there will be between pet meter and human meter readings. At higher BG ranges, because of this percentage relationship there will be a much bigger difference between the readings on a pet meter and a human meter.

If you were to add 122 to a mid-/high-range BG test result taken mid-cycle such an error might not make much odds to your cat's immediate safety BUT if your cat was at, say, 40 on a human meter (i.e. biochemically hypoglycaemic) and you were to add 122 to the 40 and then compare it to the reference range your vet uses then you would be led to mistakenly believe that your cat was in safe numbers when in fact the cat's numbers are too low and you need to intervene to raise them back to safe levels again. Note: Adding 122 to any human meter BG reading (low-/mid-/high-range BG numbers) could lead to incorrect dosing decisions being made and the cat being given too much insulin.

As Chris mentions above, all of the protocols on FDMB are written for human meter users.

When speaking with your vet, it might be worth chatting about the cat BG reference range used here for human meters which is 50-120mg/dL.

Hope you can understand the above OK. It's a bit tricky to explain.


Mogs
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That 122 difference was at the high numbers only - the higher the number, the higher the number variance. The lower the numbers, the less the 'difference'.
 
Critter Mom said:
There's no mix 'n' match.
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I like that, that's the perfect way to explain that they can NOT be compared! Seems like lately more and more vets are recommending adding 120+ to human meter readings to get an accurate feline reading - I wish they knew how incredibly dangerous their advice really is!!!:banghead::banghead::banghead:
 
Squalliesmom said:
Seems like lately more and more vets are recommending adding 120+ to human meter readings to get an accurate feline reading
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That's a worrying development.

Bearing in mind that different items of lab equipment may have different reference ranges for the same assay, you'd think that vets could grok the pet meter/human meter difference.

It's annoying that some vets consider human meters to be 'inaccurate' when reading cat BG levels. They're not. Human meters measure differently to pet meters (hence the need to use a different reference range) but the results are accurate within the meter's allowed variance (+/- 20% in US, IIRC).


Mogs
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Critter Mom said:
That's a worrying development.

Bearing in mind that different items of lab equipment may have different reference ranges for the same assay, you'd think that vets could grok the pet meter/human meter difference.

It's annoying that some vets consider human meters to be 'inaccurate'. They're not. Human meters measure differently (hence the need to use a different reference range) but the results are accurate within the meter's allowed variance (+/- 20% in US, IIRC).


Mogs
.
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I know, and you 'd think vets would get it! Apparently not. As you say, worrying! That's at least the second time just this month that I've heard about a vet telling a client to add 120 or more toa human meter reading to get a "pet" reading! That's really scary!
 
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