# Diabetes Test Strip Recall **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 23, 2010, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diabetes-test-strip-recall/565209 "2010-12-23T18:29:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diabetes-test-strip-recall/565209/1 "2010-12-23T18:29:04Z")
Not exactly Mundane and Pointless to the owners of these 359 million test strips. They can give incorrectly low blood sugar readings, causing users to try to raise blood sugar that doesn’t need to be, or not treat elevated blood sugars that should be. Not good. Doper diabetics, check your lot numbers! There are 359 different lots being recalled. > **[False Readings Prompt Glucose Test Strip Recall](https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/fdageneral/24057)** > > WASHINGTON -- The maker of multiple brands of glucose test strips -- Abbott Diabetes Care -- issued a voluntary recall of several hundred product lots of the test strips, due to falsely low readouts o (Posted because I’m pretty sure I’m not the only Doper to get my news primarily from here and The Daily Show. And this is a life and limb sort of issue - literally.) ---
**Author:** ![Lissla\_Lissar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lissla\_Lissar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissla_Lissar)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diabetes-test-strip-recall/565209/2 "2010-12-23T18:59:31Z")
Thank you for posting. We use OneTouch Ultra, so we’re not affected, but this is damn good to know. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Onimous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ea5d25/32.png) [@Ann\_Onimous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Onimous)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diabetes-test-strip-recall/565209/3 "2010-12-23T19:17:55Z")
Thanks for posting this here, **WhyNot**. Like **Lissla Lissar** , we use One Touch Ultra (for now) but I had to get my work mates on alert yesterday: I work for a medical supply company, and we sell three of the products being recalled. You can go [here](http://www.precisionoptiuminfo.com/EN/) to read about the recall and see if your lot number is on the list. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diabetes-test-strip-recall/565209/4 "2010-12-23T20:06:17Z")
You’re welcome, ladies. I just so happened to overhear it on the midday news my SO was watching, and felt compelled to post it. Did you notice the bit in that article about if it takes longer than 5 seconds to get a result, consider it not accurate? I did not know that, but it’s an easy tip to follow! Sometimes when I’m doing Accuchecks in the hospital, I’m not sure if I’ve gotten enough of the patient’s blood on there, especially for older patients with “sludgy” blood. Some machines will tell you if you don’t, or just won’t read it, but the 5 second rule is a good backup. ---
**Author:** ![pbbth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@pbbth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pbbth)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diabetes-test-strip-recall/565209/5 "2010-12-23T21:19:55Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Sometimes when I’m doing Accuchecks in the hospital, I’m not sure if I’ve gotten enough of the patient’s blood on there, especially for older patients with “sludgy” blood. Some machines will tell you if you don’t, or just won’t read it, but the 5 second rule is a good backup. I’m afraid to ask, but what do you mean by “sludgy” blood? :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Vlad\_Igor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/7feea3/32.png) [@Vlad\_Igor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vlad_Igor)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diabetes-test-strip-recall/565209/6 "2010-12-23T21:39:40Z")
A quick way to check the strip/meter would be to take a glucose tablet and dissolve it in enough water to make a solution equal to 100 mg/100 mL. Dip the strip in and read. If it isn’t within 10% of 100 (i.e. 90 - 110 mg/dL), then you may have a problem. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diabetes-test-strip-recall/565209/7 "2010-12-23T21:39:51Z")
> [@pbbth](#): > > I’m afraid to ask, but what do you mean by “sludgy” blood? :eek: Well, that was horribly inexact of me, wasn’t it? I mean, people for whom you really have to work to “milk” the blood out of the needlestick. Hang their hand low, point the finger down and really pull at their finger like you’re milking a cow and you might still only get a teeny tiny pinprick of blood, instead of a nice healthy drop big enough to fill the paper window on the test strip. Sometimes this is due to inexperienced student nurses (ie, Me) being too gingerly with the finger sticker tool and not pressing firmly enough to go deep through the skin into the capillary. Sometimes it’s due to lots of microscopic scars on the fingers of people who have been doing fingersticks for years. They might have a clotting disorder that makes them clot at the hole, instead of bleed. Remember that lots of older hospitalized patients have more than diabetes - they also have a heart or circulatory condition or kidney disease or renal failure or at the very least, they tend to be dehydrated. Lots of things that can wreck havoc with the circulation and make them not bleed so easily from a tiny stick. From what the older nurses have told me, you used to have to take quite a bit of blood to test the glucose, and it had to be drawn from the vein like blood for labs! Technology has improved, so now we can use capillary blood and a small amount of it, but one of the most common reasons for getting inaccurate blood glucose readings is still not getting enough blood into the meter - and that’s actually what’s happening with this recall. The test strips aren’t, for some reason I don’t understand, holding onto a large enough blood sample for the meter to read it accurately. ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diabetes-test-strip-recall/565209/8 "2010-12-23T22:48:27Z")
News We Can Use! Here’s a list of the brand names involved, from the article above. If your stuff is on this list, check those lot numbers! > [@](#): > > Abbott Diabetes Care pulled strips from shelves marketed under several brand names, including: > > ``` > * Precision Xceed Pro > * Precision Xtra > * Medisense Optium > * Optium > * OptiumEZ > * RellOn Ultima > > ``` ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2010, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diabetes-test-strip-recall/565209/9 "2010-12-26T03:06:06Z")
No FreeStyle? _whew_ That used to be part of the Abbott line. ---
**Author:** ![Ruby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/13edae/32.png) [@Ruby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruby)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2010, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diabetes-test-strip-recall/565209/10 "2010-12-26T03:55:36Z")
I thought that ours were Abbott but they’re not. Thanks for the heads up, **WhyNot**. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Onimous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ea5d25/32.png) [@Ann\_Onimous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Onimous)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2010, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diabetes-test-strip-recall/565209/11 "2010-12-26T03:59:08Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > No FreeStyle? _whew_ That used to be part of the Abbott line. FreeStyle is safe, as well as the Precision Xtra blood ketone strips. I have an old Ames Eyetone meter, and you used to have to leave the blood on the strip for a full 60 seconds and then wash it off the strip. The meter would read the amount of light that refracted off the strip. If you washed to little or too much blood off the strip, the reading would not be accurate. The meter itself weighs about 5 pounds, and you had to plug it in. The Eyetone was considered the first portable meter. How times have changed. ---
**Author:** ![Ruby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/13edae/32.png) [@Ruby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruby)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2010, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diabetes-test-strip-recall/565209/12 "2010-12-26T04:12:18Z")
Goodness. How old is that meter? Hub was diagnosed in 2003 so we’re fairly new to diabetes family. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2010, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diabetes-test-strip-recall/565209/13 "2010-12-26T07:19:49Z")
I use Precision Xtra, so I called the toll-free number. They said my lot # was ok.