Study: dosing errors caused by miscoded blood sugar monitors

The results of a study conducted by Bayer Healthcare, part of Germany's Bayer group, reveal that miscoded blood glucose monitors used by diabetics to determine their daily insulin requirements may be responsible for significant dosing errors. Such fluctuations in insulin dosage can lead to both short and long-term health complications.

The firm explained that coding, the process by which a particular meter is calibrated to a new batch of blood sugar test strips, is either carried out using a printer code strip, or via manual insertion. It went on to say that if this step is omitted, the meter may provide inaccurate readings, which leads to errors in calculating insulin dosage.

The study, which is published in the current edition of the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology, showed that, use of the low-dose insulin algorithm with certain miscoded meters increases the probability of a dosing error of plus or minus two drug units to around 50%, compared with a 7.1% chance of such a mistake occurring with a correctly calibrated manual entry meter. In addition, for meters that do not allow manual coding, the probability of one and two insulin unit errors could be as high as 35.4% and 1.4%, respectively.