Glucometers reading difference

[Aga]

Hello All,

I live in southampton uk and my Leon has been diagnosed over a month ago. He was in very bad state and had to be hospitalised.
He was given catinsulin but it wasn't getting him stable. My friend is a vet technician in Poland and managed to get me lantus which she always uses when treating diabetic cats. My vet refused to even listen to other options so I stopped taking him there and started doing curves and testing at home. He is on diabetic food and gained weight. Looks more like himself. The problem is his sugar is still very high.
I originally bought alphatrac but it's just too expensive to buy strips so I bought freestyle strips. I also bought freestyle insulinx meter which is Abbot brand as well to see if it would be better to use. I compared both readings today and discrepency is huge. Around 30% higher on alpha. Now I am paranoid that if the human is more accurate then Leon's sugar is actually in norm and I shouldn't give him any more insulin than 2 units.
Can you advise please?
Which meter would be more accurate?
Thank you
Aga

 

[MrWorfMen's Mom]

The AlphaTrak meter is calibrated to read cat blood and will generally read higher than a human meter. Normal for a cat using the pet meter is between 3.9 to 8.3 (70 to 150 for US folks). On a human meter the normal range for a cat is 2.8 to 6.7 (50 to 120 for US folks). The pet meter is probably a bit more accurate but the human meter using the human meter goal range as a guide is a perfectly safe alternative.

If you bought the Freestyle Lite strips to use in the AT2 meter, then you stand a 16% chance of getting as accurate a reading as you would with the AT2 using AT2 strips. The Freestyle Lite strips are the same strips as the AT2 strips but the AT2 strips have been batch tested to determine which code on the AT2 meter will produce results as close to animal lab values as possible.

Either option is Ok and the most important thing to do is to pick a meter and stick with it. Trying to compare human vs. pet meter readings will do nothing to help Leon and just frustrate and confuse you.

 

[Chris/China (GA)/Garfield]

The AlphaTrak will give you results that are closer to what you'd get on "professional" lab equipment, but most of us here us human meters just fine

The main difference is when they're "too low"......On a human meter, it's below 50 (68 on the AlphaTrak) if you're doing Tight Regulation (that's below 2.8 on human, 3.8 on Alpha Trak)

If you're doing the Start Low, Go Slow method, a test result under 90 on either meter is reason for a reduction in dose. (under 5 in your numbers)

The AT will almost always be higher than a human meter.....More so at higher numbers than low ones, but the low ones are the important ones for safety. Too high is too high no matter which meter you use