Survey of Insulin Pump Failure Rates

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Permalink Reply by Marie B on March 27, 2009 at 3:34pm

Mike, I hope you show us the results. I just did it, it only takes a minute.

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Permalink Reply by Mike on March 27, 2009 at 3:58pm

Hi Marie B,

I think I saw your data. Without a paid membership, I won't be able to make anything fancy through the gizmo website. However...

I can download the data and do some of my own crosstab analyses to link pump models with their various failure rates. As it is, lumping the failure rates of all the different models together is hardly informative, IMHO.

Once the data accumulates, I'll start to assemble some more useful interpretive data.

Cheers and thanks for sharing your info, Mike

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Permalink Reply by Manny Hernandez on March 27, 2009 at 4:53pm

Super, Mike!

Do share your findings with us, please.

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Permalink Reply by Di on March 27, 2009 at 4:08pm

Mike,
Just took survey. Am very interested in what you find. Keep us posted!

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Permalink Reply by Kristin on March 27, 2009 at 5:43pm

Awesome idea Mike!!!!

I agree with Dave on this one. I think there are too few options in the question. When you ask about pump failure "per month", that assumes a lot of failure or none. My Cozmo failed once in 4 years. So my instinct was to write zero, but that misses the one time that it did fail ( and that was not fun-- even though it only happened once).

Also, since some "pump failure" is actually caused by bad infusion sets (rather than bad pumps). It might be interesting to ask what infusion set people generally use. Just an idea!

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Permalink Reply by nel on March 27, 2009 at 5:22pm

Done deal Mike

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Permalink Reply by nel on March 27, 2009 at 6:36pm

A PS : I mentioned in my reply same as Kristin , third paragraph pump failure versa bad infusion sets /bad placement of infusion sets ...survey becoming complex , ha , ha ??
Good luck :-)

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Permalink Reply by Mike on March 30, 2009 at 11:02am

Hello all,

Here's the data so far (2009-03030, 1pm EST), based on a total of 34 pump entries. The sample size is really small, so I won't attempt any grandiose interpretations. Based on the available data, it appears the Omnipod is most likely to have problems, while the other pumps have similar monthly failure/error rates (see bar chart).

More disheartening, for the Omnipod users, is the types of failure/errors (table). 67% of those using the Omnipod (two out of three respondents) reported a "complete pump failure." Overall, the most common problems were occlusions or blockages of the infusion site or tube, which are in fact not really "pump" errors.

I hope to receive more answers to the survey, so we can get a larger pool of data together, which hopefully can give us all a better idea of how well these various pumps are working. I'm also going to start drafting up a new survey that will address comments that get posted in this forum. So please get the suggestions and criticisms coming.

Cheers all, and thanks for your input!
Mike

DISCLAIMER: One survey respondent indicated he/she had 6+ errors per month on the MINIMED Paradigm, but in the comments section of the question said that errors were only very occasional. So I assume that person meant 6 or so errors total, not monthly. I've changed that entry to 1-2 times per month.

Attachments:

• pump_monthly_failure_rates_2009-03-30.jpg, 320 KB
• pump_failure_types_2009-03-30.jpg, 340 KB

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