Comparison of Blood-Gas Hemoglobin and Electrolyte Measurements and Automated Laboratory Values in Pediatric Kidney Transplant Patients.

Objectives: The reliability of blood-gas measurements compared with automated laboratory tests in providing rapid results for pediatric patients is currently under investigation. The compatibility between fast-response blood-gas tests and standard automatic laboratory tests remains a subject of debate. In this retrospective single-center study, our objective was to compare the measurements of hemoglobin and electrolytes obtained through blood-gas analysis with the corresponding values obtained from standard laboratory tests in pediatric renal transplantation, specifically focusing on the immediate pretransplant period.

Materials And Methods: We retrospectively investigated 26 pediatric kidney transplant patients in the pretransplant period. We reviewed their medical records and compared and simultaneous measurements of hemoglobin, sodium, and potassium from a blood-gas analyzer versus a laboratory automatic analyzer. We assessed the agreement between the 2 analyses with BlandAltman analysis and Cohen kappa statistic.

Results: Among the 26 pediatric kidney transplant recipients, mean age was 10.1 ± 4.9 years and 60.0% were male patients. The mean differences between blood-gas and the venous laboratory analyzer (95% CI) were as follows: 0.11 g/dL for hemoglobin (-0.27 to 0.05 g/dL; P > .05), 0.39 mEq/L for sodium (-0.58 to 1.35 mEq/L; P > .05), and 0.00 mEq/L for potassium (-0.25 to 0.25 mEq/L; P > .05). Cohen kappa test showed the highest agreement for sodium, with no significant difference in mean values.

Conclusions: Our study demonstrated strong agreement between hemoglobin, sodium, and potassium values obtained through blood-gas measurements and venous blood samples in pediatric kidney transplant recipients. Demonstrating the concordance between rapid blood-gas analysis and automated laboratory tests can offer valuable guidance to clinicians.