The understanding and management of ventilation-perfusion (V/Q) relationships represents a cornerstone of intensive care unit (ICU) patient management.  The physiologic shunt calculation can reliably reflect the degree of gas exchange attributable to intrapulmonary disease or intracardiac shunting regardless of other ...

Non-invasive monitoring of oxygenation has become a standard procedure in neonatal critical care. Both transcutaneous pO₂ (tcpO₂) monitors and pulse oximeters involve methodological and practical issues that should be known to those using these devices in infants. tcpO₂ measurements are influenced by skin thickness, ...

Like many hospitals throughout the world, the Princess Royal Hospital in Sussex, England has set up a quality assurance (QA) scheme to verify the competency of glucose-meter operators. Their scoring system, however is anything but typical. Instead of relying solely on individual results, the system also uses...

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

With the increasing number of blood tests performed at the point of care (POC), it has become more and more important to perform method comparison studies, comparing new methods to the existing methods used in the laboratory (LAB). This is done primarily to ensure that uniform results are reported throughout the...

According to the Hvidovre Hospital, standardizing is a must if POCT is to run optimally. In the first article of the series "POCT setups for blood gas", acutecaretesting.org interviews the Danish hospital on how they have successfully implemented POCT.

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...

Whether performed by one "traditional" or several "point-of-care" devices, all Multi-Profile Blood Gas (MPBG) results must be accurate and precise if they are to be effective in managing critically ill patients. Optimal analytical quality control of multi-profile blood gas analysis requires a good quality assurance...

60 % of all neonates develop jaundice during their first week of life and thereby run a risk of getting hyperbilirubinemia.  Although different approaches for establishing treatment criteria have been suggested, treatment of neonatal hyperbilirubinemia is usually still based on the measurement of total bilirubin...

Assessment of tcpO₂ before and during hyperbaric oxygen treatment predicts the chance for a successful outcome.