Just think of how many engineers at Dexcom are wracking their brain looking for a low cost solution to track number of days sensor used as they are doing with transmitters. My thoughts are that they are putting all that energy into foiling the hackers to correct all possible hacking when the sensor and transmitter becomes one disposable unit with the G7 supposed to go live in 2020
For the life of me I don’t understand why Dexcom doesn’t recognize the issue with the first 24-hours of operation and address it directly. Instead they try to prevent the one thing that helps (presoak). For those of us on Tandem X2 using Basal-IQ the bad data also impacts pump operation. Not a devastating failure mode with Basal-IQ, but could become a major problem with Control-IQ.
The FDA is driving Dexcom’s need to do this. Don’t you think they would be concerned about the product’s inability to deliver accurate data in the 1st 24 hours for many customers?
When I spoke with the Tandem rep last spring, he told me they were aware of the problem and had heard about the ‘presoak’ solution. I’ll see him again on September 5th and plan on grilling him for info, or at a minimum giving him an earful of my complaints. He’s not a decision make so I doubt it will have any effect other than giving me an outlet for my disappointment,
To be fair, I think the sole aim is to prevent extending sensor sessions; the effect on pre-soak would just be collateral damage. But that still is an “if,” AFAIK. Haven’t yet tried it myself yet—still on my first sensor since getting one of the new transmitters—and I haven’t seen anyone else report on it. But from what I read about the “trauma effect” tweak it does seem like a potential problem.
All that aside, I agree that this period of instability would seem to be an issue from the p.o.v. of integration with the various pumps that are starting to use it in a control loop. I actually think these changes stem from trying to minimize the 1st-24 effect, but it’s still a moving target. And has consequences some of which are unintended and some aren’t.
FWIW, my experience as a rule has been that the G6 is actually less flaky in the first-24hrs period than the G5. Situations like the one in my OP excepted, which I think was due to hitting a blood vessel. And which I cleared up (yay!) by running through the sensor-extension routine. Which I won’t be able to do next time (boo!) because of the new algorithm.
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Would be great if that’s the case, but I’m not really sure how this change (as described) would help. But you’re right. I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself until we have direct experience on how the changes behave.
Maybe the algorithm has been modified to take care of it. Time will Tell.
For me the presoak is more important than restart. The flaky first 24 hours happens almost every time I use a G6 without presoak. I probably had a problem one time out of ten or twenty with my G4 and G5. To their credit Dexcom is more than willing to replace sensors, but that doesn’t make up for the frustration factor.
Same here. If I get “No restarts!” when I do it this time I’m sure gonna let Dexcom know about it. It’s a perfectly legit thing to do, whatever their view of restarts is.
I think their concern is comparing the sensor reading against the incorrect part of the calibration curve along with FDA on their back. At restart it’s looking at day 1 on the calibration curve even though the sensor is delivering signal as if it was day 2+.
Either way I agree it’s unwarranted. I did a detailed comparison (twice) for 24 hours after restart and the numbers were spot on within an hour. Of course that’s just my experience. Not enough of a sample to draw an overall conclusion.