Is Point-of-Care Glucose Testing Trustworthy in Newborns?

Newborns are vulnerable to both hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia, making accurate and timely glucose measurements essential for management. Although plasma glucose is the gold standard, point-of-care (POC) glucose testing is used widely in the newborn nursery. Because the accuracy of POC testing at high and low glucose levels in newborns is unclear, investigators retrospectively compared 4071 paired POC and plasma glucose measurements obtained within 5 minutes of each other from 2065 newborns seen in one hospital between 2013 and 2022. Of these patients, 60% were premature.