Blood gases are measured from an arterial blood sample to evaluate the respiratory adequacy and oxygen status of the critically ill patient. For the adult patient, the arterial blood is sampled either by arterial puncture or from an indwelling catheter. In neonates and children, the wish to minimize iatrogenic blood...

The collection of arterial specimens with glass syringes and immediate storage in iced water was the accepted industry standard for many years. Practice has changed over the past several years to blood gas sample collection in plastic syringes, likely due to the cost, safety and convenience of plastic. This change ...

As point-of-care testing (POCT) becomes more popular in healthcare institutions because of its ability to deliver high-quality results at the bedside, point-of-care coordinators (POCCs) are becoming increasingly tasked with controlling costs. To deal with this responsibility, POCCs often turn to equipment to solve...

Lately, everybody seems to be talking about reducing testing errors and improving patient safety. But where do you begin? The answer may be to look beyond the error itself and instead focus on what is causing it. Michael Astion, Associate Professor, Director of the University of Washington’s Reference Laboratory...

The University College London Hospitals (UCLH) is one of the largest NHS trusts in England. The Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Obstetric Hospital houses the Trust's gynecology, obstetric and neonatal services. At the neonatal unit, blood gas monitoring has historically been done by a combination of blood gas...

In 1998, Fleury Diagnostics, Brazil's most comprehensive center for diagnostic medicine and pathology with 1,600 employees and 2,500 patients a day, implemented its own system for managing documents necessary for certification and point-of-care testing (POCT) programs. The system was entirely developed in-house in the ...

Supported by Pennsylvania Hospital Kernicterus Fund and the Eglin Fund In the late 1980s, the question whether bilirubin damaged the brain of healthy infants was unanswered. The absence of documented evidence influenced the formulation of the 1994 consensus-based guidelines...

Point-of-care testing (POCT) results, like other forms of laboratory data, hold potential hidden information that can be utilized to improve patient care.  The technique of extracting useful information from vast amounts of data is termed “data mining”. Technological solutions are now available to meet the challenges ...

Simple data-mining algorithms can be applied to point-of-care testing (POCT) data to document compliance of quality control, operator training and to identify potential preanalytical errors. Data can be manipulated to automate manual review and other laborious processes for identifying data trends, verifying...

Oxygen is one of the most widely used drugs in medicine, and especially so in the newborn period. In many cases, oxygen supplementation is needed and is life-giving, but we are also aware of its toxic effects. In spite of this, we still do not know exactly what is the correct way to administer this drug. It is a...