Pain Perception of Different Lancing Sites During Self-Monitoring of Blood Glucose; A Comparison of Fingertip with Calf Lancing in Type II Diabetic Patients

Blood sugar control methods improvement in diabetic patients has led to its chronic complications reduction recently. The present study aimed to compare the severity of pain and patient satisfaction of blood sampling from the legs and fingers, since continuous lancet to the finger is painful. This analytical comparative study was done on 260 diabetic patients in the internal wards of two hospitals in 2013-14. The subjects were selected by convenience sampling method. To collect data, demographic questionnaire and satisfaction measurement researcher-made questionnaire were used and the satisfaction rate of blood sampling from finger and leg was measured. Data were entered into SPSS 14.5 software and were analyzed by Chi-square, paired T, Spearman correlation and Mann-Whitney tests. Patient satisfaction was significantly higher in blood sampling from the leg than the finger (p<0.001; χ2=18.61). The pain perception of sampling from the leg (7.46±1.31) was significantly lower than sampling from the finger (8.15±0.83) (p<0.001; t=8.16). The leg causes less pain perception and more patient satisfaction in type II diabetes patients as one of the sites of the blood glucose self-monitoring.