Agreement between arterial and capillary pH, pCO2 and lactate in patients in the emergency department
Description
We conducted a prospective monocentric study on a convenience sample of patients admitted to the ED from December 2017 to April 2018. Adults presenting to the ED for whom the treating clinician deemed necessary an arterial BGA were screened for inclusion if not pregnant. Screening was performed according to study personnel availability and overall workload. aimed for a standard error of the 95% limit of agreement of approximatively +/- 0.01. Simultaneous arterial and capillary samples were drawn for BGA. Arterial BGA were sampled by direct arterial radial or femoral puncture using a pre-heparinized syringe (safe-PICO aspirator®, 1,7ml, Radiometer®). Capillary samples were obtained at patients’ finger using a contact-activated lancet (BD Microtainer®, Becton dickinson®) and collected through capillary tubes (safeCLINITUBES® 70µl, Radiometer®). Samples were analyzed with the same point of care BGA analyzer (ABL90 FLEX® Radiometer®). Analysis was not blinded, clinical information, index test results and reference standard results were available to the assessors of the reference standard.