Multiple site analytical evaluation of a portable blood gas/electrolyte analyzer for point of care testing.

Objective: To evaluate the analytical performance of the SenDx 100 portable blood gas and electrolyte analyzer (SenDx Medical, Carlsbad, CA).

Design: Accuracy was evaluated by correlation of whole blood patient samples with the Nova Stat Profile 5 (Nova Biomedical, Waltham, MA) and the Ciba Corning 865 (Chiron Diagnostics, Medford, MA). Precision was evaluated using quality control materials (RNA Medical, Acton, MA).

Setting: Critical care laboratories and operating rooms in two institutions.

Measurements And Main Results: Precision studies performed at three different concentration levels for each analyte demonstrated intra-assay precision of < or =2.5% coefficient of variation and interassay precision of < or =4.0% coefficient of variation in all cases. Analysis of patient specimens in general showed good to excellent correlation to reference analyzers. Regression variables are tabulated.

Conclusions: The SenDx 100 portable blood gas and electrolyte analyzer is a simple and easy to use analyzer demonstrating acceptable performance compared with reference methods.