PERFORMANCE-CHARACTERISTICS OF 3 WHOLE-BLOOD GLUCOSE MONITORS

We evaluated the performance of three whole-blood glucose meters for introduction to hospital bedside testing. The samples were from hospital patients who had a wide range of glucose concentrations and hematocrit values. The whole-blood specimens were kept on ice to minimize preanalytic degradation. Plasma glucose from each sample was quantitated for the reference value. The maximum acceptable error between whole-blood measurements and reference was set at +/- 15%. Glucose meter readings exceeded this limit in 35.4%, 27.0%, and 43.4% of samples with the three different meters. Variation from reference values was also analyzed according to specimen hematoctir and glucose concentration. Each instrument exhibited different bias with hematocrit and glucose. These results indicate that none of the three instruments has met current standards for interchangeable hospital-wide use.