RESUMEN
The corresponding author has identified a calculation mistake in the original publication of the article. The corrected value is given in this Correction. Under the Results section, the median (range) age of the patients in the methodological study should read 76 (26-86) years instead of 56 (26-86) years.
RESUMEN
Arterial blood gas (ABG) analysis is an essential tool in the clinical assessment of acutely ill patients. Venous to arterial conversion (v-TAC), a mathematical method, has been developed recently to convert peripheral venous blood gas (VBG) values to arterialized VBG (aVBG) values. The aim of this study was to test the validity of aVBG compared to ABG in an emergency department (ED) setting. Twenty ED patients were included in this study. ABG and three aVBG samples were collected from each patient. The aVBG samples were processed in three different ways to investigate appropriate sample handling. All VBG samples were arterialized using the v-TAC method. ABG and aVBG samples were compared using Lin's concordance correlation coefficient (CCC), Bland-Altman plots and misclassification analysis. Clinical acceptable threshold of aVBG value deviance from ABG values were ± 0.05 pH units, ± 0.88 kPa pCO2 and ± 0.88 kPa pO2. CCC revealed an agreement in pH and pCO2 parameters for both aVBG in comparison to ABG. In all aVBG samples, an overestimation of pO2 compared to ABG was observed. Bland-Altman plot revealed clinically acceptable mean difference and limits-of-agreement intervals between ABG and aVBG pH and pCO2, but not between ABG and aVBG pO2. Arterialization of VBG using v-TAC is a valid method for measuring pH and pCO2, but not for pO2. Larger clinical studies are required to evaluate the applicability of v-TAC in different patient subpopulations.
