Diabetic Test Strips from name brand manufacturers, including such products as One Touch Ultra, FreeStyle Lite, Accu-Chek Compact Aviva Comfort Curve, Ascensia, Breeze 2, TrueRead, TrueTrack, Prestige, and more!

The days of puncturing your tender fingertips with a lancet over and over again, trying to get an accurate glucose reading, are gone.

With improvements in both the lancets themselves, and the diabetic test strips, diabetic patients now have a new level of comfort for this vital health care function.

Improvements in Lancets
Lancets are the small sharp needles which a diabetic patient uses to puncture their skin to access a blood sample for testing. Because your blood flow is several times faster in your fingertips, they have been the primary location used for collecting this blood sample. This faster flow allows for a more accurate reading of the glucose level and a larger blood sample.

If a quick and accurate reading is important, such as when a diabetic person is experiencing symptoms of hypoglycemia or low blood sugar, the fingertips are still the preferred testing spot, for this reason.

There have been two major improvements in the lancets used by diabetes patients. The biggest one has been decreasing the size of the lancets. Most of the lancets used today, such as those sold by Accu-Chek and ReliaMed, are 30 gauge needles. The diameter of this needle is micro-thin, only 0.01225 of an inch. Lancets are often beveled at the tip also, to make insertion quicker and less painful. The other improvement that has come about in the use of lancets is providing means to limit the depth of the penetration of the needle.

Improvements in Diabetic Test Strips
In the past diabetic test strips needed to be 'coded' to match the glucose meter which read the strips. This coding left room for error which could result in inaccurate information. In some situations, improper reading of test strips could lead to incorrect insulin dosages being administered to the patient. The coding element has been simplified in modern testing strips to protect patients against this type of miscalculation in their home treatment.

Two other improvements in the diabetic test strips are their absorption abilities and the need for smaller amounts of blood to provide an accurate reading. Some strips, such as the Accu-Chek Comfort Curve even have an indicator window to let the patient know if the blood sample was adequate or needs to be retaken.

More efficient means of handling the multiple test strips used by diabetes patients have been developed as well. Multiple strip disks, like the Breeze II Test strips, automatically code, dispense and dispose of each diabetic test strip. One disk holds ten strips, allowing the user to avoid the handling of small test strips for each glucose level testing. This improvement has been appreciated by people with small hands, undeveloped motor skills, or older hands that fumbled with the individual testing strips.

Alternate Testing Sites
For many diabetes patients, one the most important advancements in daily diabetic testing is the ability to select alternate test sites, such as their palm, arm or thigh. With their doctor's approval, they no longer need to puncture their fingertips every time they draw out the blood sample needed to test their glucose levels. For those who play guitar and use their fingertips in other sensitive ways daily, this advancement was cause for much celebration. Small children with sensitive fingers and older patients with calluses on their fingers from years of testing, also were rejoicing at the news. It was the improvements in the testing materials, the lancets and the diabetic testing strips that assisted in making this option available to many more individuals.

The stabbing of your fingertips is much more painful than many people realize. Your fingertips are loaded with nerve endings. A person who has lost their sight will tell you that your fingertips are designed to be extra sensitive to any type of physical stimulation. That means that the pain felt from a poke into your fingertip is many times more painful than it would be when applied to other areas of your body. The other aspect that diabetes patients have to deal with is that it isn't just an occasional prick of the finger. It is a minimum of once a day. For many patients it is several times a day. They have dealt with it and endured it, but it never becomes painless.

Summary
All of these advancements, the smaller lancets, the simpler, more accurate diabetic test strips and the option to use alternate test sites have worked together to make the daily testing faster and less painful. For the millions of individuals that deal with diabetes on a daily basis, this has been VERY good news.