Introduction Emergency department (ED) medicine is a specialty that faces unique medical and organizational challenges. Emergency department staff must treat a wide variety of acute injuries and illnesses in a rapid and expedient manner to ensure optimal patient care. This makes logistical organization arguably more...

An aid for interpreting blood gas results in acid-base disturbance

Is it acceptable to use venous rather than arterial blood for blood gas testing of trauma patients?

Accurate estimation of in vivo blood glucose concentration is potentially compromised by in vitro glycolysis, the temperature- and time-dependent enzymatic metabolism of glucose by blood cells after blood is removed from the body.  For more than 40 years it was recommended that in order to avoid the potential problem ...

Pregnancy is associated with significant anatomical and physiological change in order to both accommodate and sustain the developing fetus. As this literature review article written by two Australian obstetricians makes clear, pregnancy-associated physiological change affects the blood concentration of a range of...

One of the most significant developments in laboratory medicine over the past few decades has been application of point-of-care testing (POCT). Technological advance allows an ever-increasing repertoire of in vitro diagnostic and monitoring tests to be performed outside the laboratory, at the patient’s bedside, in the ...

Decreased resources coupled with increased demand represents a major problem for healthcare providers that is most publicly manifest in overstretched hospital emergency room (ER) departments around the world. Prolonged waiting times and extended periods of overcrowding in ER, which are increasingly the norm, result in ...

The gold standard sample for blood gas analysis is arterial blood, whereas venous blood is the standard sample for all other biochemical and hematological tests. By comparison with venipuncture, the procedure used to sample venous blood, collection of an arterial blood sample is technically more difficult, as well as...

A simple change in phlebotomy practice – switching from conventional to low-volume sample blood tubes – results in a 42 % reduction in patient blood loss, and consequent reduced risk of iatrogenic anemia. That is the positive headline finding of this recently published study conducted at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in ...

Almost all (99 %) of the approximate 1 kg of calcium in the adult human body is contained in bone, but a small fraction (approximately 350 mg) circulates in blood plasma at a concentration of around 2.5 mmol/L. This circulating calcium comprises three fractions: around half (50 %) is free ionized calcium; the rest is...