Talk:Arterial blood gas

I was looking to find the person, or person's name who invented this little piece of equipment. I was doing a little study work, and someone had said his name was Robert Auld. Can someone shed some light on this? thank you. Woohoo.

The oxygen electrode was invented by Leland C Clark, and the CO2 electrode was invented by John Severinghaus. Both inventions were made in the latter half of the twentieth century. I don't know who invented the pH electrode, but once you find that out you will have a full house, because the other blood gas variables are derived from O2 CO2 and pH. I don't know much about Clark, but Severinghaus is a giant of respiratory physiology and definitely deserves a biography if you want to write one. Fibrosis 17:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Lead section revision

Nice job on the merge! I took a swing at the lead, trying to clarify a few things:

• comparing ABG to oximetry is not terribly useful in my view. Certainly pO2 vs SpO2 could be mentioned later in the article, but I don't believe it belongs in the lead.
• The sentence about homeostasis seemed out of place. Good content, just needs more context.
• added capillary and mixed venous sources for blood sampling. These are fairly common (particularly in pediatrics). Comparison of mixed venous SO2 vs arterial SO2 can be useful in evaluating cardiac output after heart surgery, for example. It's one reason why the phrase "specifically on blood from an artery" doesn't sit well with me, because although technically venous samples could be placed in a "venous blood gas" article and capillary in "capillary blood gas" article, realistically they both belong in a discussion of ABG.
• Tried to clarify exactly what ABG analyses. Classically, you can interpret an ABG with pH, CO2, HCO3, so I put those up front, and changed "concentration" to "partial pressure" when speaking of the gases.
• Listing the specialties that ABG is used in is a futile task, I feel, so I simplified the list to "other areas of medicine".

Hope that isn't all too drastic, comments and corrections welcome of course! Cheers, Basie (talk) 21:30, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Good catch on partial pressure vs concentration. After re-reading the lead I agreed with your objection and revised some of it for clarity. I had also noticed that the article was missing a See also section so I added one with a link to acid-base homeostasis and some other topics I thought were relevant. Feel free to add more. twirligig^{Leave one! ⋄ Check me out!} 23:31, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Semantics?

The article opens with "An arterial blood gas (ABG) is a blood test that is primarily performed using blood from an artery", is it just me, or is this a given? Surely, by definition an ARTERIAL BLOOD gas must be performed using blood from an artery.

The same analysis can be performed using blood from a vein, but it becomes a venous blood gas. Dlegros (talk) 21:40, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Allen's Test

Reading through this article again, is it worth mentioning or linking to Allen's test?

I note the comments in the merge section above regarding Wiki not being a "how-to" guide, but feel that it would be appropriate.

Any thoughts? Dlegros (talk) 22:16, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

edits to reference ranges and interpretation

I changed the table a substantial amount as arterial blood gas interpretation is beyond the scope of a small table in a single article. Further talk about interpretation of arterial blood gases could probably be included in acid-base homeostasis, however, a tutorial on ABG interpretation is certainly beyond the scope of Wikipedia -- many great tutorials exist and are linked. Another change is to make sure we have our '-osis'es and '-emia's straight. Acid/alkalemia refer specifically to the change in pH. It is possible to have acid/alkalosis in the absence of an abnormal pH. I removed phosphate from the table as it does not really come into play in arterial blood gas interpretation. The statement on lactate was also removed, though I think with significant revision it could be reintroduced. To clarify, lactate electrodes are common on blood gas analyzers because arterial samples are ideal samples from which to measure lactate -- and because lactate is directly interlinked with hypoxemia and acidosis (lactic acidosis) which are also measured with arterial blood gases. It's not a neonatal-only thing, it's fairly common in many critical care areas. Wrin (talk) 15:39, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

PCO2

I came looking for an explanation of the t in tCO2, which I found: total CO2 (tCO2 (P)c) = the total amount of CO2, and is the sum of HCO3− and PCO2 by the formula: tCO2 = [HCO3−] + α*PCO2, where α=0.226 mM/kPa, HCO3− is expressed in millimolar concentration (mM) (mmol/l) and PCO2 is expressed in kPa but there's no specific definition of PCO2 elsewhere in the article. Opbeith (talk) 12:18, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I also came looking for what was meant by the terms pCO2 and pO2 but found that these terms are used on this page with no explanation as to what they are - this article assumes knowledge to that extent.--194.73.101.212 (talk) 11:22, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Arterial blood gas

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Arterial blood gas's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "southwest":

• From Blood urea nitrogen: Normal Reference Range Table from The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. Used in Interactive Case Study Companion to PATHOLOGIC BASIS of DISEASE.
• From Thyroid function tests: Normal Reference Range Table from The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. Used in Interactive Case Study Companion to Pathologic basis of disease.
• From Transferrin: "Normal Reference Range Table". Interactive Case Study Companion to Pathlogical Basis of Disease. The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. http://pathcuric1.swmed.edu/PathDemo/nrrt.htm. Retrieved 2008-10-25. 
  Kumar V, Hagler HK (1999). Interactive Case Study Companion to Robbins Pathologic Basis of Disease (6th Edition (CD-ROM for Windows & Macintosh, Individual) ed.). W B Saunders Co. ISBN 0-7216-8462-9. 

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 18:45, 18 November 2011 (UTC)