ABL90 Flex- Venous Lactate vs Arterial Lactate Testing

I have seen a mixed bag of responses to this issue - some facilities go to the trouble of differentiating arterial from venous samples and assigning a separate reference range, but just as many if not more, do not.  I don't think the difference between arterial and venous lactate values is enough to make a difference with clinical decision making, for the most part.

We run arterial lactate in our CVOR and CVICU on the ABL90s.  We have arterial set as the default sample type and staff is pretty good about changing to venous, if necessary (i.e.  RT running a venous gas). The lactates correlate very well between the ABL90 and our main lab, as long as the samples are fresh.  We did not compare arterial to venous since there was not a specific request for venous lactates as a POC test.  Sorry, didn't help you much.