They often provide the very first information diabetics depend on to keep healthy: the readings provided by blood glucose meters. These mini-machines are absolutely essential to keeping blood sugar balanced. But can we depend on them?

When persons with diabetes use miscoded blood glucose meters to determine how much insulin to take, significant errors in insulin dose can result that may potentially lead to short- and long-term health complications, according to findings of a new study presented at the Sixth Annual Diabetes Technology Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.

In this study, for certain miscoded meters, the probability of insulin error of plus or minus 2 units of insulin was 50% as compared to 8% for correctly, manually coded meters. The probability of insulin dose error of plus or minus 3 units of insulin was 23% for the miscoded meters but only 0.5% for the manually correctly coded meters.

The problem occurs during coding, when glucose strips are 'matched' to the meter, either by insertion or by entering a code from the strip box. Obviously, an error occurring at this level would throw the entire process into a danger zone.

The study showed that auto-coding meters were more dependable than the manually coded variety, so you may want to consider switching models. You can get more details about this very important finding here.