long-time insulin pumper: failure of insulin delivery with all kinds of infusion sets

[turtlea 10]

I am a long-time insulin pumper. I have been on the Pump for the last 16 years. About 7 or 8 years

ago, I encountered the set did not deliver insulin anymore or last 1 or less days.

So I had to switch to different sets. Some kind of set worked for a while

 then it stopped working in 2 years or less.

Then I switched to another set. Now I end up with Sure-T, which seems the only one that works.

Then I have trouble again. it failed after overnight.  I have to change a few hours without shooting high.

 

Any long-term pump users encounter similar issue, and how to cope with it ?

 

 

[NoraWI 4,809]

Sounds as though you have built-up scar tissue. Do you rotate your sites?

[notme 2,910]

The only reason I. An think of that sets don’t work would be exactly what NoraWI says and that is built up scar tissue.  It seems you may have to get a bit creative with site locations and stay way from the areas with built up scar tissue.  You have to rotate and change sets every two to three days.  

[zatff 10]

My endocrinologist suggested I switch to OmniPod to give me better access to new sites for infusion sets. I have a lot of scar tissues from  two decades of pumping and MDI before that.

When you say it quit working did you get error messages or alert that it was blocked?

I have had problems sometimes with what appears to be failed delivery even though there are no alarms or errors messages.

when the cartridge ran out and a new one seemed to get the pump working again since my BG levels finally started going down instead of up.  The next time I experienced this I tested with a couple manual injections of insulin at small dosages and saw immediate results so I put in a new cartridge even though it was still half full and my BG returned to my usual levels.

 

Then I switched to OmniPod and on the third Pod I had the same problem since several corrective boluses showed no results for several hours. The Pod also read out as empty after only a few hours so I figured the Pod was defective.  Then I had an incident where the Pod read empty after three hours and I had a severe hypo reaction.  It was set on suspend for two of those three hours too. The helpline rep figured out then that the controller was defective even though there were no error messages or alerts.

 

Both of these events are hopefully very rare but defective equipment can occur.  Years ago I had problems with a batch of bad cartridges that were leaking so my BG levels ran really high till they got replaced. Deltec recalled these too.

 

The more frequent issue for me has been a crimped cannula which can happen upon insertion.  Metal cannulas are less likely to have this problem but I never found them to be very comfortable. Sometimes an infusion set seems inserted OK but still is not working well and this might be due to scar tissue and poor absorption in that area or a problem in the delivery system.  A manual injection is the best way to check this. If you inject near the infusion site and it still shows no results but another location works well, you need to move the site. If you have run out sites you can easily use then trying the OmniPod might help you reach new areas.

[Mich 10]

I had this exact problem.  The only thing that finally worked for me was to switch to a set with a 90 degree insertion steel needle.  UnoMedical calls it "Contact Detach" but Tandem (who makes my pump) has a proprietary set called "True Steel" which uses their *ahem* improved Luer Lock connection called T Lock. Notably, the Unomedical set is 13mm long but the Tandem set is only 8mm.  I'm hoping the shorter one works for me.

 

If it works out for me, it is a painless insertion and no site irritation.  Wish I'd done it sooner.