INR home-checking kit advice

[Fitandfearless]

All - after 25 years of attending the INR clinic every month I’m investing in a home-testing INR kit.

The outlay will be around £500 all in so I want to get it right - any advice from home-testers out there? Is Coaguchek still the most accurate?

Thank you!

[judes]

Like you I got fed up going to INR clinics.

I have the coagucheck as far as I know it’s accurate I’ve certainly not had any probs.

Two things to remember if your INR is over 8 it won’t register different clinics have different protocols for readings that high.

Secondly check with your GP practice or warfarin clinic wether they are willing to prescribe the testing strips. It’s a bit of a postcode lottery and the strips can work out expensive.

When I lived down south there was no way they were going to prescribe strips, moved to a different area and no probs.

Hope that helps

J

[werd]

Buy your coaguchek monitor direct from Roche. It will cost 299 pounds. If you are on long term warfarin which you are it will be vat free. But as advised before check with your health board via your gp if they will supply the strips

Ps I buy the needles direct from Roche. For some reason the pharmacy cannot supply the the are remarkably cheap

Yours drew

[werd in reply to werd]

I am in forth valley health board supply of strips no bother

Ps it is the local health board that pay for the strips not the gp

Yours drew

[Clickyvalve]

My GP seemed a bit reluctant at first to let me self-monitor. Then I sent her a link to the NICE guidelines (nice.org.uk/guidance/dg14) which recommends self monitoring and self management via the Coagucheck XS system if the patient wants it and is capable of using it. She became more supportive and said she’d investigate whether I could get the equipment on the NHS. Two or three weeks later she got back to me and said the NHS would pay for the strips (they are expensive) but I would have to buy the monitor. I consider that a good result.

I have just taken delivery of the monitor, which I ordered direct from Roche at £299, free of VAT. Roche’s instruction booklet and training video are very clear and they’ve been quick in answering a couple of questions I had.

[Amikatari]

Hi all, I was about to post about this myself, but did a search first, and you all sound knowledgeable.

I'm not going to the GP surgery for INR tests atm, I'm self-isolating from everyone except my household members, and they're both working from home and barely leaving the house either.

I spoke to a nurse specialist, who'd taken my GP's advice, and she advised me that our CCG does support self-testing, that I'm an eligible candidate and that it's best to test from home right now for my own safety, and she recommended the Roche Coaguchek XS. It does look good and affordable, but I want to get one quickly, as I'm slightly overdue a test.

After an online search I found out that they don't sell (but do support) them here in the UK any more (though they do still support them and sell or prescribe strips), you have to order them from the US. The US Roche site says it's run out and can't send more until further notice. I've been told the model they now sell in the UK is called the Roche INRange, they're a bit more expensive but have an interest-free instalment plan on Medisave.co.uk, but since yesterday it's marked as sold out. I can't get the Roche UK website to work at all right now, either.

I'd be happy to get my hands on either model right now, (preferably via an instalment plan or by using Paypal Credit, as I'm skint!), but it looks like they're selling out fast all over the world, even the second-hand ones, which I'd rather not resort to (unless a member of our community here has one to sell, which I'd consider), and people seem to be exploiting the situation on Amazon and Ebay by selling boxes of strips for the price of an actual machine, to make people think they're getting a machine unless they read the small print, or by selling even used ones for over a grand to rip off desperate people!

Sorry to hijack your thread, FitandFearless, and I'll create my own post soon too, but have any of you kind people here got any tips/website links on how to actually get hold of one in the 'current climate'? I've searched for several hours with no luck.

Best wishes and stay safe and well x