The possibility of replacing central Venous Blood Gases with Arterial Blood Gases in ventilated patients Download PDF

Introduction: In many ICUs, in order to evaluate acid- base status in patients, central venous catheter blood sample is used instead of arterial blood samples. In some studies replacing venous blood samples with arterial blood sample is considered invalid. The aim of this study is examining the correlation between the amounts of arterial blood samples and amounts of central venous catheter blood samples in patients who are in ICU. Materials and methods: 60 ventilated patients who had central venous catheter and wanted to give ABG samples, were appointed in this study. After getting their consent, arterial blood samples and central venous catheter blood samples were taken from them. After sending the samples to the lab and gathering data, analyzing them was carried out by SPSS16 software, statistical T-test and Pearson correlation test. Findings: results showed, all variables related to arterial blood gases and venous blood gases are widely different from each other. Correlation test showed, all variables except PCO2 in arterial blood sample and venous blood sample are correlated. Conclusion: Although this study showed there is a correlation between arterial blood sample and venous blood sample, because of low level of correlation, replacing it in ventilated patients is not recommended.