Venous Blood Gas Samples

We require a blood gas syringe to eliminate air contamination.

We use both the lithium heparin tubes and heparinized syringes. If they're sent to the lab for analysis on the ABL90s, they should be on ice. If it's POCT, they are immediately analyzed on a Siemens EPOC. 
We also allow for capillary samples using the EPOC Care-fill capillary collection system. We run capillary samples on the ABL90s as well, using the long, heparinized capillary tubes.

We require a blood gas syringe for arterial or venous samples.  We use capillary tubes for newborn gases.
According to our instrument manuals, plastic tubes are not recommended for measuring pO2, so we do not allow them for ABG testing.  Also, shipping on ice is not recommended for pO2 testing.

On the i-STAT, we use heparinized capillary tubes, lithium heparin tube, or blood gas syringe.