• Louanne M Carabini, Jacob Nouriel, Ricardo Diaz Milian, Erin R Glogovsky, Robert J McCarthy, Thomas G Handler, and Michael L Ault.
• Northwestern Medicine, Department of Anesthesiology, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL l-carabini@northwestern.edu.
• Respir Care. 2016 Aug 9.

IntroductionA pneumatic tube system (PTS) is a cost-effective, rapid transport modality that utilizes induced pressure changes. We evaluated the clinical importance of 2 transport modalities, human courier and PTS, for blood gas specimens.MethodsFollowing open heart surgery, 35 simultaneous pairs of arterial and venous blood gas specimens were analyzed from 20 subjects. Of each pair, one specimen was transported to the blood gas laboratory via a human courier and the other via a SwissLog PTS. Transport modalities were compared using the Bland-Altman limits of agreement method.ResultsCompared with the walked specimen, the bias for PaCO2 was -8.0 mm Hg (95% CI, -40.0 to 24.5 mm Hg); PaCO2 , -0.94 mm Hg (95% CI, -3.76 to 1.86 mm Hg); PvO2 , -0.60 mm Hg (95% CI, -6.90 to 5.70 mm Hg); PvCO2 , -0.58 mm Hg (95% CI, -3.12 to 1.92 mm Hg) for the PTS specimen.ConclusionThe difference in the PO2 and PaCO2 of paired (walked vs tubed) arterial and venous blood gas specimens demonstrated a slight bias. PaCO2 values demonstrated the greatest bias, however not clinically important. Thus, PTS transport does not impact clinical interpretations of blood gas values.Copyright © 2016 by Daedalus Enterprises.

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