Blood gas analysis at the point of care plays an important role during and after an open-heart surgery. acutecaretesting.org recently talked to Prof. Knut Kleesiek, MD, Director of the Institute for Laboratory and Transfusion Medicine of the Heart and Diabetes Center North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany, to find out more ...

50-75 % of all newborns develop jaundice during their first week of life [1,2,3]. The decision behind which treatment is necessary and when it should be initiated is based upon a measurement of the concentration of total bilirubin (ctBil) in serum, plasma or whole blood.  It is therefore obvious that it is important...

Apgar scores and umbilical artery pH have traditionally been used as objective measures of neonatal asphyxia. According to the literature, the practice of cord gas analysis varies greatly both between and within countries - whether analysis is performed, whether it is routine at all births and why it is performed...

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 ...

Cord blood ph measurement at birth, using relatively simple and non-invasive methods, provides obstetricians and perinatologists with an objective and sensitive measure for the condition of the infant during the final stage of birth.  As long as certain criteria are observed, the reported values are reliable. Routine ...

In the U.S. all clinical laboratory determinations, including blood gas testing performed at point of care (POC) or in the central laboratory, is regulated by the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA).  Congress passed CLIA to ensure accurate, reliable, and timely test results regardless of...

Monitoring of blood gases is essential in neonatal intensive care. Traditionally arterial samples have been considered the gold standard, but in critically ill neonates physiological changes can happen within minutes to a degree endangering the newborn. Clinicians can therefore not rely solely on intermittent...

Fluid and electrolyte management is an important and challenging part of the management of any very premature or critically ill newborn. The newborn's ability to maintain fluid and electrolyte homeostasis in the face of the vagaries of extrauterine life is compromised by immature renal function. The very premature...

Measurement of glucose and lactate after 30 minutes of storage at room temperature can give deviating results of up to 5 % [1,2] and 29 % of the reference value [3] respectively [1,4], due to in vitro glycolysis Glucose and lactate are both important parameters in the surveillance of patients in critical care...

External Quality Assessment (EQA) in medical laboratories have evolved over the past 50 years to provide more sophisticated systems compared with the simple participants’ analytical performance evaluation of earlier years.  There are clear distinctions between the proficiency testing schemes and the evolved External...