Hospital ICU Demonstrates Significant Reduction In Time To Blood Gas Result

Sphere Medical, an innovative company in critical care monitoring and diagnostics equipment, announces that a recent time and motion study by University Hospital Southampton demonstrated a 1.5 minute (>20%) reduction in time to blood gas results when using the Proxima™ bedside blood gas monitoring system^[1]. The study also found that conventional blood gas measurement took critical care nurses away from their patient for nearly 30 minutes/day, whereas time away was zero when using Proxima, as it is a patient-dedicated in-line analyzer. This eliminated the need for a nurse to find cover to monitor ICU patients at risk of adverse events, such as self-extubation or developing an acute physiological disturbance.

The significant results were presented at both the British Association of Critical Care Nurses conference and Intensive Care Society State of the Art Meeting as a scientific poster entitled, “Time and motion study of Proxima arterial blood gas (ABG) sampling.”

During routine ABG sampling in intensive care units (ICU), nurses have to leave their patient to use an ABG analyzer for processing; this then requires another care giver to step in to observe the critically ill patient to maintain safety. There is also risk of blood splash when taking, transporting and processing the sample. As a point-of-care analyzer that enables blood gas analysis directly at the patient’s bedside, Proxima overcomes all of the aforementioned issues. Southampton’s research study was undertaken to compare workload associated with using Proxima versus standard ABG sampling, including safety aspects.

For the comparative study, independent data collectors continuously observed ICU nurses to ensure the accurate capture of all ABG sampling episodes of 20 cardiac ICU patients over 24 hours (10 connected to Proxima and 10 to a standard ABG sampling system). A significant difference in time to result using Proxima compared to a standard BGA system was observed, with Proxima saving an average 1.5 minutes. Proxima also required no time away from a patient’s bed-space, whereas a standard system was 3 minutes on average - long enough for a patient to self-extubate or develop an acute physiological disturbance. Time to result using a standard ABG system could also be prolonged for a number of reasons, for example if there was no one available to watch the patient or there was a queue to use it.

As Proxima operates as a patient-dedicated closed system attached to a patient’s arterial line, there is no risk of blood splash during sampling. Blood is drawn directly from the patient and over the Proxima sensor; following analysis, all blood is safely returned to the patient with zero blood loss. The study noted that in ABG sampling systems without a captive syringe, blood loss could total >60 mLs over 24 hours.

References:

Mitchell K, Salmon K, Troughton G, Egbosimba D, Grocott MPW. Time and motion study of Proxima™ arterial blood gas (ABG) sampling. British Association of Critical Care Nurses annual conference, September 2016. (available to download at www.spheremedical.com/arterial-blood-gas-time-and-motion-study).