Getting blood out of a finger

I was having a look at the Accu-Chek Compact Plus recently as part of a forthcoming review (hurrah! I hear all you blood-glucose-meter-review fans cry!) and my attention was drawn to the finger pricker, lancet delivery device or whatever you want to call it.

Normally when I review a meter I don’t usually bother with the finger prickers, as they’re all pretty much of a muchness. If you’re interested (which I assume you’re not) I use a pricker that came with the Wavesense Jazz as it’s teeny-tiny and stupidly simple to use. Anyway, the inescapable fact of it is that to get a blood sample to test your blood glucose, you have to shove a sharp bit of metal in your finger, causing it to bleed out a bit of your precious gooey life force onto a test strip. There’s simply no avoiding the whole metal-in-finger thing.

However the finger pricker which came with the Compact Plus claimed to be considerably less painful than other finger prickers. Being quite simple, I was blinded by Accu-Chek’s science but essentially it seems it uses an air-driven pump to shove the lancet into your finger rather than the conventional spring. Apparently this means the lancet wiggles around less as it carves its way through your flesh and is thus less painful.

Intrigued, I gave it go.

“Ow!” I said as the lancet thrust its way into my bloodied little finger.

Yup, you’ve guessed it – I noticed absolutely no discernible difference between the Accu-Chek, it hurts just as much as a normal device. Oh well.

I know that finger pricking doesn’t really hurt all that much (unless, of course, you’re a complete wimp) but after doing it a zillion times a day, day-in day-out, it does get somewhat tiresome. So any improvement on the whole pain thing is good in my book – so ten out of ten for Accu Chek for effort; one out of ten for effectiveness.