Comparison of Blood-Gas Hemoglobin and Electrolyte Measurements and Automated Laboratory Values in Pediatric Kidney...

The reliability of blood-gas measurements compared with automated laboratory tests in providing rapid results for pediatric patients is currently under investigation. The compatibility between fast-response blood-gas tests and standard automatic laboratory tests remains a subject of debate. In this retrospective single-center study, our objective was to compare the measurements of hemoglobin and electrolytes obtained through blood-gas analysis with the corresponding values obtained from standard laboratory tests in pediatric renal transplantation, specifically focusing on the immediate pretransplant period.

We retrospectively investigated 26 pediatric kidney transplant patients in the pretransplant period. We reviewed their medical records and compared and simultaneous measurements of hemoglobin, sodium, and potassium from a blood-gas analyzer versus a laboratory automatic analyzer. We assessed the agreement between the 2 analyses with BlandAltman analysis and Cohen kappa statistic.

Among the 26 pediatric kidney transplant recipients, mean age was 10.1 ± 4.9 years and 60.0% were male patients. The mean differences between blood-gas and the venous laboratory analyzer (95% CI) were as follows: 0.11 g/dL for hemoglobin (-0.27 to 0.05 g/dL; P > .05), 0.39 mEq/L for sodium (-0.58 to 1.35 mEq/L; P > .05), and 0.00 mEq/L for potassium (-0.25 to 0.25 mEq/L; P > .05). Cohen kappa test showed the highest agreement for sodium, with no significant difference in mean values.

Our study demonstrated strong agreement between hemoglobin, sodium, and potassium values obtained through blood-gas measurements and venous blood samples in pediatric kidney transplant recipients. Demonstrating the concordance between rapid blood-gas analysis and automated laboratory tests can offer valuable guidance to clinicians.