Abstract

Obtaining and interpreting blood gases and electrolytes is fundamental to the management of many critically ill patients. In such conditions, the speed and accuracy of tests, particularly ABG and electrolytes, to detect and monitor metabolic derangements is very important. Even though most ABG equipment can measure electrolyte concentrations, 2 separate samples –one whole blood and the other –serum are drawn and sent for analysis. Also there is a lack of consensus on the interchangeability of the values of electrolytes obtained from the two machines, which prevents the use of just one sample for the estimation of both these analytes. This study is being undertaken to assess the concordance between whole blood electrolytes measured by a point-of-care device and serum electrolytes measured in an auto-analyzer. Materials and Methods: This is a cross- sectional, data of samples from patients hospitalized, in a tertiary care between January 2017 to March 2018. Patients of all age groups tested for electrolytes i.e. Sodium, Potassium and Chloride were both by the ABL800 FLEX from RADIOMETER COPENHAGEN (Direct ISE technology) and Dimension Clinical Chemistry System from SIEMENS (Indirect ISE technology). Results & Conclusion: There were a total of 255 samples were used for the study in whom electrolytes was done by both ABG analyser and Chemistry Analyser. The values of sodium potassium and chloride done on ABG analyser and the Chemistry analyser the p value was statistically significant it was found to have a strong positive correlation (r = 0.8325 for K+; r = 0.8763 for Na+; and r = 0.8695 for Cl-). Furthermore, the Bland Altman plot showed that the values were lying between the 95% CI of the mean difference which shows there is a good agreement between the two instruments.

Description