Anyone Bought An INR Home Testing Machine?

terra_ferma

David_Sears wrote: »

This is not strictly true. You can ONLY get the test strips on prescription if your local health board supports anticoag self-testing and allows its GPs to prescribe the strips. For example, the only health board in Scotland that supports anticoag self-testing is Greater Glasgow and Clyde - and then only for young people under eighteen. At the time of writing - January 2014 - adult self-testing of INR levels is not supported by any health board in Scotland. Therefore, I recommend that you check your local health board's policy in this regard before buying a machine, as you may find you will have to buy the strips yourself on an ongoing basis. And, as we've heard, the strips are very expensive.

You are replying to a post that is 6yrs old, and the poster hasn't been on MSE for nearly 3yrs. Another zombie thread rises from the dead...

OverlandLandy

Also info is inaccurate.
I lived in Perth & Kinross until moving to Fife.
both GP's were happy to prescribe Strips.
I'm one of only 4 people in fife who self tests!

AshfordSteve

It is easy to tell if a product is allowable on a NHS prescription - all you need is access to the Drug Tariff (which you can get online) and an understanding of the rules that govern it. Several types of INR monitoring strips are listed and so are allowable on prescription. Whether an individual GP will prescribe them and the guidance for various NHS authorities re prescribing them is far more difficult to determine without local knowledge.

Dabigatrin and rivaroxaban should be off patent in 10 years time or so which will make life far easier as they do not require INR monitoring and have far fewer interactions. However at present they are too expensive for widespread use and have more limited indications than warfarin.

flora48

Just stumbled across this thread. I enquired about self testing with my GP who was most supportive.
I had to buy the Roche Coaguchek Xs to be compatible with their system. Test strips and lancets have been put on my repeat prescription. I phone in with my result and they phone back with the dosage.
Now the interesting bit, the Coaguchek XS sells on Amazon UK for exactly twice the price direct from Roche, that is £299. On searching to buy this I found lots of sites offering the machine anything between £400 and £500+.
Hope this will help someone to save quite a substantial sum of money.

frugalstephen

Anyone that has read the last page or 2 of this thread will know I'm not a fan of the Alere INRatio machine which I use. Well, there is now a limited recall of it if you have any of the following conditions illustrated on their 'Field Safety Notice'. If you are dithering over whether to get the Alere or CoaguChek, dither no longer! The CoaguChek wins outright by knockout punch...

http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm426166.htm

frugalstephen

I know this is an old thread, but I'm posting this in case a 'google' search throws this up as a topic you may be researching. After having my Alere machine for some time now, I have now managed to negotiate a refund on the darn thing, and have invested in a new CoaguChek machine. Well, I should have bought one in the first place, it's so easy to use, needs less blood, and you can feed the test strip from the side (like a diabetic BS machine) rather than hover precariously over the top aiming for the target window! You can also hold the machine in your hand, to angle the test strip to your blood sample, rather than having to place it on a solid surface. It also gives the reading out quicker. Anyone wondering which of the 2 UK available machines to get would save themselves much hassle in buying right in the beginning!

lecurate112

INR is an acronym for the International Normalised Ratio and is a test which measures the length of time it takes your blood to clot compared to normal; normal blood has an INR of approximately 1.0. The INR test was developed by the World Health Organisation so that tests would be standard throughout the world, allowing people who have to take life-long warfarin to travel and get comparable blood tests wherever they are.

frugalstephen

mmm... interesting, an answer to a question that was never asked! You in politics by any chance?? LOL