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Robert O. Crapo, MD; Jack L. Clausen, MD
American Thoracic Society Blood Gas Survey Committee New York

JAMA. 1986;256(24):3348-3349.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

Dr Skorodin's recent review of current oxygen prescribing practices¹ points to the American Thoracic Society Blood Gas Proficiency Testing Program results² as evidence that measurements of arterial oxygen pressure (Po₂) are less precise than measurements of pH and carbon dioxide pressure.

It is important to note that the products currently used for blood gas proficiency testing do not behave like fresh whole blood. The particular product we used and reported has very little oxygen buffering capacity and behaves very much like aqueous material. This characteristic contributes to the large variability of the Po₂ results. Work by the American Thoracic Society Blood Gas Survey reference laboratories demonstrates that the Clark electrode is both accurate and reproducible when assessed with tonometered fresh whole blood, the best material currently available for assessing the accuracy of Po2 measurements.

Proficiency testing results cannot be extrapolated to measurements in . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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