glucose testing strips

[scottybear]

will they not work correctly if expired???:

[jenb]

I go through them too fast to know for sure, but if you have some try them out. If the readings seem completely out of whack, jettison them in favor of some new ones.

Jen

[Tribbles]

Watch out for ones that need a chip for coding as these never work. Accu-chek in particular does this. The Precision Xtra and it's generic cousins have a chip as well but I have never had expired strips for those to know how they behave.

[Michael_lambert]

Tribbles, they never work past the expiry date? or never work in general?

[Tribbles]

Tribbles, they never work past the expiry date? or never work in general?

Accu-chek Avia at least never work because the meter tells you they have expired. I expect it compares the expiry date on the chip with the current date so you could work around it by setting the date on the meter back exactly a year and running your meter like that.

[janice21475]

I have used strips as out of date as 1 year and they gave a correct reading (well, as correct as these devices can be, anyway).

Hope this helps, I didn't see you mention what unit you were concerned about.

Janice

[djt1344]

In defense of Accu Chek they have a great customer service team, they do not second guess that the strips or the meters can fail, they just send you out a new one. I love my accu chek aviva but go thru the strips alot.

Daniel

[jps]

It's simple.

Run your control solution on the expired lot of test strips. If the QC is good, the strips are good.

I've used them up to a year past expiration without problems.

I work in a lab. I can attest that nearly every single reagent is still "good" way past the expiration date, even though we are required, by policy, to toss them out.

However, you might want to be careful when you test your strips. If your valid range for low is 80-100 and you get 99 and your valid range for the high is 225-275 and you get a 274, you might want to toss them because there's a bias in there.... if you hit near the mean (90 and 250 respectively in the example above), I would definitely use them.