I have praised how great the Contour Next meters are. And I have recommended them to everyone here.
But there is something I have noticed that I think I should caution people about.
The Contour meters give you a chance to reapply blood, if you don’t put enough on the strip the first time. Contour calls it their “Second-Chance” sampling:
Second-Chance® sampling allows your patients up to 60 seconds to reapply more blood which may help prevent wasted strips while still demonstrating a high degree of accuracy
But I have noticed really bad accuracy whenever I do the Second-Chance blood. It often misses how I feel, and I will immediately do another test with a new strip, and often times the difference is horrible!
I just did one, and didn’t put enough blood on it, and my second-chance blood application gave me a 146. I knew that was wrong because I felt low. An immediate retest showed me at 60. That’s pretty crappy.
Anyway, just wanted to warn everyone who uses the Contour. Be careful with the
second-chance result.
I would like to hear if anyone else sees the same thing. Thanks.
Oh. Thanks for the info. We have noticed a few times bad results with the Contour which were totally surprising. But that was some months back and I never thought to correlate with “second chance”.
I will totally pay attention to that. Thanks so much for the heads up !!!
Didn’t know you could do it until a couple of people mentioned it in another thread. Decided not to do it because they also mentioned how bad the accuracy was. I thought I remembered them saying it tended to read low, but I can’t remember for sure.
I’ll test it out tonight for you. It’s only 10— the night is young still.
I’ve seen similarly poor results with other meters that permitted second-chance type samples… The tests in which I added extra blood to finish the test were not accurate, generally.
On the other hand, soon after diagnosis in 2004, I had a one touch ultra meter. That thing started the test too quickly…I probably wasted 15 test strips out of 100 that way. That thing drove me crazy…
I did 4 back to back tests, 256, 249, 244… and 205.
For the last test, based on the fact you mentioned my having 60 seconds to add blood, I waited 50 seconds before adding. So I’d say either it MIGHT affect the readings (1/4) or when letting taking longer to add the blood, readings may be affected. Maybe.
Just to be clear and make sure I am communicating it well - it isn’t just waiting before you put on the blood. It’s putting on blood, but it’s not enough and it gives you the opportunity to add more blood so there is enough.
Is that what you were doing? Sorry I wasn’t clear in the original post.
That’s what I was doing, yes. When you’ve entered an inadequate amount of blood, it beeps and shows half a blood sample on the screen. When you add the remainder, it beeps again and shows the dashes. I’m not doing a good job explaining this, but, yes, it’s what I was doing.
Okay.
Yes it’s odd to me that the only time I see bad results with that meter are when it has done the “do-over”. It’s not always bad with the second-chance, but sometimes it is.
It has happened enough times to make me want to scrap the strip from now on when I have to do the second-chance application, and instead just start over.
I really haven’t noticed any difference if I do this. If it’s inaccurate, it certainly isn’t to the level you’ve experienced. It’s possible that it said I’m 7 when really 5 or 11 when really 9, but I accept this level of inaccuracy and haven’t seen anything beyond this.
I also haven’t noticed any inaccuracites. The meter is generally super accurate. If it’s been inaccurate with the “second chance” tests, which I do need to do sometimes, then it hasn’t been to a degree that I’ve noticed. I’ll pay more attention and test again next time it happens to check.
I also realized I probably wasn’t clear. I did 4 “second chance” tests in a row, applying the extra boood quickly on the first 3. The last one I waited almost a minute before giving the extra. Could waiting the longer stretch affect accuracy? Or is that not a thing?
I tried the 2nd chance one time. The result was wildly inaccurate so I never tried it again. Since then, on the rare occasions that I could have tried a 2nd chance, I chose to discard the the 22 cent test strip and use a fresh one.
I’m wondering if the method of adding the second chance blood matters.
This could occur in two ways in my mind.
First, you poke but don’t extract enough blood on round one. So you press to extract more blood from the same hole in your finger. Add to existing strip.
Second, you could poke, extract to add to strip, and realize the finger doesn’t have any more juice to add. So you poke a separate finger, and add during the second chance window.
I think your scenario #2 will be worse than scenario #1, but in reality I think both aren’t ideal. Blood sugar measurement isn’t as accurate as we want anyway, but adding additional variables will make it worse.
The reason I think that scenario #2 is worse, is that after you poke your finger anything that is on your skin around the site will dissolve and or be carried from your blood sample into your meter. Using two sites to obtain the blood will double the amount of stuff that could be carried into your meter.
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