Fingerpricks provide capillary blood mixed with tissue fluid. A venupuncture provides venous blood. The normal ranges and the error bars are different for fin

Fingerpricks provide capillary blood mixed with tissue fluid. A venupuncture provides venous blood. The normal ranges and the error bars are different for finger prick blood.Virtually data and research on the normal ranges and ranges in various diseases has been done on venous blood. The thousands of journal articles that come out each week are done using results of venous blood.For instance, see this article from this week's NEJM http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1504720?query=featured_home#t=articleMethods http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1504720?query=fea... The glycated Hb readings referred to in this article are automatically taken to be on venous blood samples, as are the fasting glucose levels. Your physician relies on readings from venous blood. His training in medical school was on normal and pathological ranges in venous blood samples. Physicians are thrown a bit when given pathology readings from other countries ( mmol versus the old fashioned American mgs/litre are confusing. if the pathology printout is in German or Arabic, it adds even to the fun ). It breaks the flow of rapid data analysis while the physician breaks out bc https://www.gnu.org/software/bc/ https://www.gnu.org/software/bc/ or some other calculator to convert units. Add in the confusion and inaccuracy of fingerprick samples, and the potential for even more error, increases a bit.