England's Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals have a POCT system they consider a success. This is a roadmap of the steps they have taken.

In 1948, Singer and Hastings introduced the concept of buffer base (BB). The change in BB from "normal" was called deltaBB (ΔBB). This change in BB was an expression of the non-respiratory (metabolic) component of an acid-base disturbance. This was the first approximation to base excess. In the 1950s, Astrup and...

Since Meakins in 1927 described the relationship between increased blood lactate levels and the presence of oxygen debt (tissue hypoxia) in patients with circulatory shock [1], lactate levels have been used to diagnose and monitor the treatment of these patients. However, as lactate is a normal (end) product of...

p50 is a shorthand representation of hemoglobin-oxygen affinity. A lower p50 is protective in ambient hypoxemia, whereas increasing the p50 should be beneficial in hypoxia due to lung disease, anemia, and tissue ischemia. Despite encouraging theoretical and experimental data, it is not yet established that...

When performing method comparisons, it is important to address a number of preparatory and preanalytical issues to ensure that comparisons solely reflect the analytical differences between the two methods in question. This article provides preparatory and preanalytical checklists that can be used when comparing two...

Preparing for an accreditation inspection is often synonymous with carts full of paper. For some labs, though, the paper hassle associated with accreditation is now history. These labs are letting their data management systems do all the work.

John Severinghaus, who recently turned 80, is one of the pioneers in the field of blood gas. To celebrate his birthday, bloodgas.org has asked him to look back on the first developments leading to the modern blood gas analyzers. The following article has also been published in Anesthesiology, The Journal of the...

Children are not just small adults, and present unique challenges to the clinical laboratory. Blood specimens must be very small; for example, total blood volumes in a premature infant can be as small as 115 mL. Genetic diseases frequently must be detected in the newborn period. Reference values change with age....

In conjunction with Apgar scores and other parameters, umbilical-cord blood gas values are used to assess newborn respiratory status.  Paired umbilical-cord gas venous and arterial samples were collected from 200 patients to establish reference ranges for blood gas/hemoximetry parameters. Umbilical-cord samples were...

The intraoperative monitoring of the partial pressure of carbon dioxide in arterial blood (pCO₂) is used to assess the adequacy of ventilation and guide clinical interventions.  Although end-tidal CO₂ monitoring remains the most frequently used non-invasive technology in the intraoperative setting to provide a...