Performance of cassette-based blood gas analyzers to monitor blood glucose and lactate levels in a surgical intensive care setting.

Background: With the use of a traditional blood gas analyzer (BGA) (ABL800 Radiometer) for blood glucose monitoring, tight glucose control (TGC) reduced in-hospital mortality and morbidity of surgical intensive care unit (ICU) adult and pediatric patients. Such BGAs are now superseded by cassette-based BGAs. We assessed the analytical reliability of cassette-based BGAs to monitor patient's metabolic status in an ICU setting.

Methods: We evaluated recovery/linearity, imprecision/repeatability and relative accuracy vs. comparison methods for glucose [coupled hexokinase glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (HK/G6PD) assay] and lactate (lactate dehydrogenase assay) in ICU patient samples with two cassette-based BGAs [RP500 (Siemens) and ABL90 (Radiometer)] and with the ABL800 BGA.

Results: Recovery of spiked glucose up to 348 mg/dL (19.3 mmol/L) was complete for all BGAs. Repeatability of ABL800 and ABL90 was comparable with the comparison method (about 1%), but higher for RP500 (about 2.4%). All BGAs were in agreement with the comparison method, with all glucose measurements falling within preset 10% criteria suggested by Karon. Recovery of spiked lactate (up to 25 mmol/L) was incomplete at all levels. Repeatability of ABL800 and ABL90 was comparable with the comparison method (about 4%), and 5.5% for RP500. All BGAs were in agreement with the comparison method, with >98% of the lactate measurements falling within 30% biological-variation-based criteria.

Conclusions: The cassette-based BGAs quantified blood glucose and lactate levels in ICU patients within the acceptable error ranges. Cassette-based BGAs can be used for monitoring patient's metabolic status in an ICU setting.