NICU Capillary Blood Gas Validation

Hi Blythe,

     We just did this last year. Our Level II nursery RNs do not use the EPOC. They call a rapid response and our Nurse Intensivist that is trained responds. When they asked for the ability to perform capillary testing, I took the EPOC up to them and trained them on how to collect a sample in the Care-Fill capillary tube. I also demonstrated the EPOC so they would understand about the 3 min cal time and not to do the heel stick until the intensivist told them the cal had passed. I also did an orientation on the Care-Fill capillary tube with the intensivists. We got 30 samples by having the intensivist go up when the nurses were collecting PKUs. They would line the babies up and collect the samples and hand it off to the NI who would immediately dose the card. If I recall it took us 4-5 weeks. Heads up....the capillary H&H did not work well for us. Only 4 were within the TEa. We discussed this with the neonatal pediatrician and she was ok with not getting that result.

I do not know about getting samples from ARUP. My personal opinion is that we had already proven the EPOCs match the lab. You need to take into account the preanalytical also with the heelstick and handing off the sample.

Hope this helps!

Lois Snider

lois.snider@stclair.org

Good morning,

May I suggest having a discussion with your medical director/chemistry technical specialist regarding sample requirements for your validation studies? Present to them the issue and perhaps they would approve of a "mix" of samples- maybe 10-15 babies and the remaining comprised of adult specimens? We will be validating the iSTAT in the coming weeks in our NICU and our medical director approved of the 10-15 for our studies.

Best of luck,

Lillian