Leaking cannula?

So I was reading in a small Swedish diabetes forum where someone has issues with the infusion set leaking at the site and if she doesn't change set and site her numbers will creep up. The infusion set can be fairly new when it starts leaking. This person said it mainly happens when she's been active. She's using 8mm Accu-Chek Rapid D. Sometimes there is some blood in the tubing too.

Anyone here who has had similar problems or any trick to avoid this? It's really a big waste of infusion sets and a lot of unnecessary pokes when the sets fail long before the 3 day mark.

This person has been pumping for a few years.

It happens and you have to change it. Search the pumpers forum for more discussions, here's one

https://forum.tudiabetes.org/topics/how-do-you-know-if-an-infusion

when you find a good discussion, you can use Google translate on it for the person if they don't speak English.

This person had asked her CDE about it and the CDE had not even heard of it. May add that pumping is not very common in Sweden, so not too many CDE or doctors are familiar with pumps.

There are many ways to avoid this but it would all depend on different variables.

  1. Where exactly are the infusion sets leaking?
  2. Has she contacted the company to let them know this is happening? She may have gotten a bad batch. I know I have contacted Acc-Check about issues and they replaced the infusion sets for me. I just have to save the infusion sets for them so they can check them out.
  3. Is her skin totally dry when she changes infusion sites?
  4. Does she use a skin prep or extra adhesive?
  5. Does she use a barrier?
  6. Where on body does she place the infusion set? Does it happen in some locations more than others?
  7. Has she tried different infusion sets? The pump she is using uses Lure-Lock infusion sets so they are interchangeable with other Lure-Lock infusion sets. Different infusion sets work better for different people.
If it were me I would become my own investigator and find out as much about pumps as I could. I would then take this back to my doctor and have them work with me to get the problem solved.