tCO2 failures for CAP AQ surveys (Radiometer)

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Good morning,
Is anyone out there having issues with tCO2 low failures for AQ CAP surveys run on the Radiometer? We are using ABL90s and have had several failures since switching to Radiometer - various sites and various instruments. So far not much feedback from Radiometer....

7 Replies

Linda Jewell

Thu Apr 13, 2023 at 9:36AM

Our Respiratory Department didn't have any trouble with the tCO2 but did have 3 failures for PO2. They switched to the ABL90 from a different version of the ABL last year. They usually ace their surveys.

Ken C

Thu Apr 13, 2023 at 10:37AM

We had this problem, but managed to solve it eventually. That was a few years ago; I will dig through my corrective actions to pull what I can for you.

Donna Armstrong

Thu Apr 13, 2023 at 10:41AM

Thank you, Ken, that would be fantastic :)

Ken C

Thu Apr 13, 2023 at 2:33PM

All of my corrective actions related to this were in 2019 and done by hand instead of digitally, so I no longer have the detailed records of troubleshooting : ( Radiometer came out a few times, including a technical specialist to review settings. It was discovered that a setting in the analyzer had been changed by a former staff member and we looked again at which CO2 calculation we are using (there are at least two you can choose). Running in patient mode ONLY for all analytes has worked best for us. Proficiency mode resulted in multiple analyte failures (not just CO2). Also, don't forget to uncheck all those suppression and repression boxes... that's a fun chore that makes it hard to run these as much like patient samples as possible.

Are you failing low? We were always low.

Donna Armstrong

Mon Apr 17, 2023 at 8:12AM

Thanks, Ken, we will double check our CO2 calculation settings. Yes, we always fail low, and are running as arterial patients as per the CAP instructions.

Jessica Jenkins

Mon May 08, 2023 at 1:06PM

We have also historically failed for tCO2 being too low. After working with Radiometer, we discovered that there is a tCO2(b) and tCO2(p). Our reports are only set up to report the (b) and that is what was being submitted. After we had computer issues on a couple instruments and service repaired them, we couldn't get a result for tCO2 unless we added tCO2(p) to our reports and that result was really close to the peer mean from CAP. We are also running the samples as patients selecting arterial.

Donna Armstrong

Thu Nov 30, 2023 at 10:22AM

Just to update, we did change our reporting method to tCO2(p) and have been successful with surveys ever since. :)

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tCO2 failures for CAP AQ surveys (Radiometer)