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BACKGROUND: Mechanically ventilated patients increasingly spend hours in emergency department beds before ICU admission. This study evaluated the performance of blood gases in mechanically ventilated subjects in the emergency department and subsequent changes to mechanical ventilation settings. METHODS: This was a multi-center, prospective, observational study of subjects ventilated in the emergency department, conducted at 3 academic emergency departments from July 2011 to March 2013. We measured the rate of arterial blood gas (ABG) and venous blood gas (VBG) analysis, and we assessed the associations between the conditions of hypoxemia, hyperoxia, hypercapnia, or acidemia and changes to mechanical ventilator settings. RESULTS: Of 292 ventilated subjects, 17.1% did not have a blood gas sent in the emergency department. Ventilator changes were made significantly more frequently for subjects who had an ABG as the initial blood gas sent in the emergency department (odds ratio 2.70, 95% CI 1.46–4.99, P = .002). However, findings of hypoxemia, hyperoxia, hypercapnia, or acidemia were not correlated with ventilator adjustments. CONCLUSIONS: In this prospective observational study of subjects mechanically ventilated in the emergency department, the majority had a blood gas checked while in the emergency department. While ABGs were associated with having changes made to ventilator settings in the emergency department, clinical findings of hypoxemia, hyperoxia, hypercapnia, and acidemia were not. Inattention to blood gas results may lead to missed opportunities in guiding ventilator changes in the emergency department.

An athletic 21-year-old male was admitted to the surgical ICU after sustaining 2 stab wounds to his torso. He had an episode of left lung collapse early in his course, managed with suctioning and increased PEEP, to 15 cm H2O. He was bradycardic (heart rates 50-60 beats/min) throughout his ICU stay, but when the PEEP was lowered to 5 cm H2O in preparation for extubation, he developed sinus pauses and his heart rate dropped to 20 beats/min. After a thorough evaluation, the drop in his heart rate was determined to be due to increased vagal tone from increased cardiac output with the decreased PEEP. After premedication with glycopyrrolate, he was successfully extubated the following day, while his heart rate remained at his baseline of 50 beats/min. We review the physiologic mechanisms of bradycardia due to the removal of mechanical ventilation.

Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning is an important public health issue, as this colorless, odorless gas is a common cause of unintentional poisoning and leads to over 400 deaths each year in the United States.[1][1] Detection of CO poisoned patients may be difficult, as even classic symptoms, including

In reply: The study by Weaver and colleagues[1][1] demonstrated that, while the RAD-57 CO-oximeter operated within the manufacturer's specifications, with 68% of SpCO measurements falling within ± 3% of the laboratory carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) measurements of < 40%, in several cases the SpCO