ISTAT

I use ISTAT in 4 hospitals for gases. The back up to one ISTAT is another ISTAT. You can call if you like.

210-297-9657

Centura Health in Colorado exclusively uses iSTAT in all 17 hospitals and 18 free standing ED/Urgent Cares, including all of their central labs. The only place I had a different blood gas platform was in open heart rooms because even 2 minutes was too long for them.

thanks so much.  Do you have any advice against it?

Also, what is used for co-oximetry if using istat for blood gases?

We used AVOX 4000's in lab for co-ox, and RT was also using Masimo rainbow.  I do not have any advice against it, switching our respiratory departments away from bench top blood gases not only saved a lot of money, I believe it greatly improved accuracy when they stopped transporting samples all over the building - as you know blood gases are best when tested immediately. As for the main lab, it comes down to volume. If you are high volume then a bench top analyzer might be worth it, but they are way too expensive for low volume areas. You should be running them at full capacity (500 tests per cartridge, etc) before the cartridge expires. I have seen place that have those bench tops, and they maybe run 70 blood gases on a 300 or 500 test cartridge before it expires. Then you are looking at a $25-50 blood gas cost per test.

We use the ABL90s in the Cathlab and in our CICU and PICU.  They are very quick.  The downside to them is the cost.  They can be expensive to run if you don't run many patient samples.  They also run a measured FO2Hgb not calculated like the iSTAT.