Blood Gas Analysis Clinical Guide

Pulmonary
21 articles
Every clinician should have a basic understanding of respiratory physiology and know how to interpret blood gas results to better manage their patients. Blood gas analysis is invaluable in both outpatient and inpatient settings, particularly in critically ill patients. It’s no exaggeration to say that mastering blood-gas interpretation allows us to make life-saving decisions for our sickest patients. The physiologic principles reviewed in this Clinical Guide will equip you with a deep and thorough understanding of your patients’ respiratory problems. The articles in this guide are organized to guide you through a step-by-step approach to evaluating and assessing your patients (the same one followed in our Blood Gas Analysis Course). First, we review how to evaluate your patient’s oxygenation and ventilatory status, followed by the assessment of their acid-base status. In the end, you’ll have a solid foundation of a systematic approach to blood-gas interpretation that will empower you to look at a patient’s blood-gas report and know exactly what to do!
Every clinician should have a basic understanding of respiratory physiology and know how to interpret blood gas results to better manage their patients. Blood gas analysis is invaluable in both outpatient and inpatient settings, particularly in critically ill patients. It’s no exaggeration to say that mastering blood-gas interpretation allows us to make life-saving decisions for our sickest patients. The physiologic principles reviewed in this Clinical Guide will equip you with a deep and thorough understanding of your patients’ respiratory problems. The articles in this guide are organized to guide you through a step-by-step approach to evaluating and assessing your patients (the same one followed in our Blood Gas Analysis Course). First, we review how to evaluate your patient’s oxygenation and ventilatory status, followed by the assessment of their acid-base status. In the end, you’ll have a solid foundation of a systematic approach to blood-gas interpretation that will empower you to look at a patient’s blood-gas report and know exactly what to do!
Last update4th Dec 2020
Chapter 1

The basics of blood gas analysis

Development of a deep understanding of arterial blood gas, or ABG, analysis is very much based on a solid appreciation of the underlying pulmonary physiology of gas exchange. This chapter of our Clinical Guide reviews the basic physics of gases in a way that’s intuitive and visually engaging. So, dive right in and lay the foundation for anything that’s to come in later chapters.
Chapter 4

What determines how oxygen is delivered to peripheral tissues?

Do you recall that oxygen delivery to peripheral tissues depends not only on how much oxygen is loaded into the blood in the lungs but also on the amount of blood pumped out of the left ventricle? The articles in this chapter address the determinants of oxygen delivery to peripheral tissues, including oxygen content of the blood and cardiac output.
Chapter 6

The importance of carbon dioxide removal

It’s appropriate to focus on arterial blood gas analysis to understand how effectively the lungs oxygenate the blood. But equally important is the test’s value in assessing the elimination of the principal metabolic product of aerobic metabolism—carbon dioxide. The arterial carbon dioxide level is a critical parameter in the other major application of arterial blood gas testing—the analysis of your patient’s acid-base status. The articles in this chapter of our Blood Gas Analysis Clinical Guide, review the principal determinants of arterial PCO2.


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