• The Journal of Korean Academic Society of Nursing Education
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.265-271
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• 2006

Purpose: To analyze the newly developed vacuum assisted auto-lancing technique applied to the forearm for the purpose of obtaining an adequate blood sample for glucose test with minimal pain. Methods: Visual and facial pain measures were introduced to compare lancing pain between the forearm and fingertip in 58 normal females. Sampled blood volumes were accurately measured by computer scanning technique. Results: Visual pain measure demonstrated significant pain reduction effect of the forearm sampling compared with the traditional fingertip sampling, which was also consistent with facial pain measure results. Blood volume more than $0.5{\mu}L$, enough for blood glucose testing with modern glucometers, was collected in 399(86%) of 464 forearm samples. Conclusions: Capillary blood sampling could be performed with minimal pain on the forearm by the newly developed vacuum assisted auto-lancing technique. With some resampling when necessary, the forearm sampling seemed very useful, considering almost no pain felt by the patients.