I have hypoglycemia caused by a damaged pancreas, so I monitor my blood sugar several times during the day and night. I have just been lancing a different finger each test and when I’ve used up all fingers, I use my arm, but a friend told me that I could use my finger more than once for a test. How many times can you lance your finger before its time to move to a different finger? How can I do this without making my fingers bruise? (I use a One Touch Profile meter, and a lancet device with B-D lancets.)

Complications from too many lances in a finger are exceedingly uncommon. Rather than having a technical answer to this question, I would suggest that you can lance the finger until you’re tired of it or you see too many holes and are ready to move on to another finger. Also, if you’re tired of lancing fingers, you might try the One Touch� Ultra meter or FreeStyle meter, both are approved for “alternate site” testing and work well with using a special lancet that pokes your forearm which is typically also totally painless.

MSB

[Editor’s comment: Note: The meter you are currently using is not approved for alternate-site testing.

In addition, in the face of possible hypoglycemia, you probably should not use alternate sites at that moment. See LifeScan and Therasense press releases.

SS]