Journal of clinical monitoring and computing
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J Clin Monit Comput · Dec 2022
Accuracy of a point-of-care blood lactate measurement device in a prehospital setting.
Point-of-care blood lactate is a promising prognostic biomarker of short-term mortality risk. Portable lactate meters need validation in the prehospital setting before widespread implementation and it is unknown whether the mode of sampling (arterial, capillary or venous) matters. This study aims to compare the StatStrip Xpress Lactate Meter's (SSX) accuracy to a validated blood gas analyser, ABL90 FLEX (ABL90), in arterial samples in the prehospital environment and to determine if lactate levels measured in venous and capillary blood samples are sufficiently accurate compared to arterial lactate levels. ⋯ Bland-Altman plots showed that SSX lactate measurements in arterial, venous and capillary blood samples all had systematically negative biases compared to ABL90. We conclude that the SSX is accurate in our prehospital setting. Venous samples should be preferred over capillary samples, when arterial samples cannot be obtained.
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J Clin Monit Comput · Dec 2022
Validity of transcranial Doppler ultrasonography-determined dynamic cerebral autoregulation estimated using transfer function analysis.
Transcranial Doppler ultrasonography (TCD) is used widely to evaluate dynamic cerebral autoregulation (dCA). However, the validity of TCD-determined dCA remains unknown because TCD is only capable of measuring blood velocity and thus only provides an index as opposed to true blood flow. To test the validity of TCD-determined dCA, in nine healthy subjects, dCA was evaluated by transfer function analysis (TFA) using cerebral blood flow (CBF) or TCD-measured cerebral blood velocity during a perturbation that induces reductions in TCD-determined dCA, lower body negative pressure (LBNP) at two different stages: LBNP - 15 mmHg and - 50 mmHg. ⋯ In addition, the ICA Q-determined TFA LF ngain from rest to LBNP50 was significantly correlated with TCD-determined TFA LF ngain (r = 0.460, P = 0.016) despite a low intraclass correlation coefficient. Moreover, in the Bland-Altman analysis, the difference in the TFA LF ngains determined by blood flow and velocity was within the margin of error, indicating that the two measurement methods can be interpreted as equivalent. These findings suggest that TCD-determined dCA can be representative of actual dCA evaluated with CBF.
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J Clin Monit Comput · Dec 2022
Effect of near real-time feedback tool in the electronic medical record on protocol compliance during laparoscopic cholecystectomy: a single-center retrospective analysis.
Implementation of evidence-based medicine has proved difficult across medical fields. Leveraging the electronic medical record may improve clinician compliance to published best practices. Our hypothesis was that the use of a near real-time feedback tool would improve compliance to the protocol steps. ⋯ Individual protocol component compliance increased from 4994/8418 (59.3%) to 7669/8554 (89.7%) (p < 0.001). The near real-time feedback tool reduced the number of cases with every number of deviations (except zero) at p < 0.001. The near real-time feedback tool significantly improved protocol compliance for patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy.