Assessment of a new blood glucose strip: comparison of Visidex, Visidex II, and Chemstrip bG with Glucose Analyzer determination of blood glucose.

Chemical test strips for estimating blood glucose are reliable, rapid, and convenient when properly used. Ames (Miles Laboratories, Elkhart, Indiana) has recently introduced a new product, Visidex II, which does not require water for development. This study compares the Visidex II with its predecessor Visidex, an established test strip, the Bio-Dynamics Chemstrip bG (Boehringer-Mannheim, Indianapolis, Indiana), and plasma glucose as measured by standard laboratory methods. Determination of blood glucose by visual inspection by all chemical test strips gave an estimation of true plasma glucose, and was reliable in predicting those values that were hypo- and hyperglycemic, although Chemstrip bG tended to underestimate in the hypo- and euglycemic ranges. Visidex II is more convenient to use than Visidex and is equally reliable in estimating true plasma glucose. In addition, strips from 20 patient samples were read daily for 7 days. Reacted Chemstrip bG test strips began to deteriorate within 24 h, and showed a 27% decline in estimations by day 3. Reacted Visidex II strips were stable for 1 day, but then rapidly declined to 50% of the original estimation by day 4.