Evaluation of Two Handheld Point-of-Care Blood Gas Analyzers in Healthy Donkeys

Abstract

There has been increasing interest in blood gas analysis in donkeys. "Point-of-care (POC) testing" is a diagnostic testing performed at or near the patient. The aim of the study was to assess the agreement between two POC blood gas analyzers in donkeys. Arterial and venous blood samples were collected from 17 donkeys and analyzed using a fully automated blood gas analyzer (ABL 700 Series Radiometer, Denmark) (RAD) and two POC blood gas analyzers (i-STAT® System, USA; VetStat®, Idexx, USA). The parameters revealed by all three devices were submitted to a canonical discriminant analysis, to evaluate which of them can discriminate the POC analyzers from RAD. On the basis of the discriminant analysis, we evaluated the best POC for each parameter registered, in comparison with RAD. Moreover, the results changed in relationship with the type of blood (venous or arterial blood). The agreement between i-STAT® and RAD was good for venous samples, while was poor for arterial samples. A poor agreement was found between VetStat® and RAD for both venous and arterial samples. The implementation of the number of subjects might lead to a better understanding of the potential role of the POCs in clinical setting. Finally, increasing population of the study would be recommended in order to set reference values. KeywordsBlood gas analysis, donkey; Point-of-care testing; arterial blood gas analysis; venous blood gas analysis.

Assessment of Donkey (Equus asinus africanus) Whole Blood Stored in CPDA-1 and CPD/SAG-M Blood Bags

“…The measurements of pH, partial pressure of O 2 (PO 2 ), partial pressure of CO 2 (PCO 2 ), bicarbonate (HCO 3 − ), sodium, and potassium were conducted with 2 mL of blood, through a blood gas portable apparatus (i-Stat, Abbott Laboratories, Chicago, IL, USA) using commercial cartridges. This equipment had shown a good agreement with the standard analyzer for the venous blood of donkeys [18]. The glucose and lactate concentrations and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activity were determined in an automatic biochemistry analyzer (Rx Daytona, Randox, Antrim, UK).…”