Journal of clinical monitoring
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We evaluated the short-term variability of PaO2, PaCO2, pulse oximeter saturation (SpO2), and end-tidal PCO2 (PETCO2) in mechanically ventilated trauma patients. All patients were stable and undisturbed during the evaluation periods. Blood gases were obtained from an arterial catheter 4 times at 20-minute intervals. ⋯ The variability of PETCO2 was similar to the variability of PaCO2. However, the variability of PaO2 was considerably greater than that of SpO2, which was probably related to the shape of the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve and the relatively high saturations of the patients in this study. Variability of blood gases, SpO2, and PETCO2 should be considered when these values are clinically interpreted.
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The technical equipment of today's intensive care unit (ICU) workstation has been characterized by a gradual, incremental accumulation of individual devices, whose presence is dictated by patient needs. These devices usually present differently designed controls, operate under different alarm philosophies, and cannot communicate with each other. By contrast, ICU workstations could be equipped permanently and in a standardized manner with electronically linked modules if the attending physicians could reliably predict, at the time of admission, the patient's equipment needs. ⋯ It was found that the equipment need (represented by two different setups, "high tech" and "low tech") could be predicted most reliably (96.4% correct predictions) compared with a prediction on outcome of ICU treatment (94.5%), on duration of artificial ventilation (75.4%), and on duration of stay (43.4%). There was no significant (p greater than 0.05) difference in the reliability of predictions between residents and consultants. Factors influencing the postoperative equipment need varied with surgical specialty.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)