Clinical Implications of a Quality Assessment of Transcutaneous CO_2 Monitoring in Preterm Infants in Neonatal Intensive Care

摘要

More than 1% of infants are born premature. Many of these children require special treatment because of immature organs and body functions. CO_2 is an important parameter to monitor in order to avoid serious brain damage. Blood sampling of CO_2 has several shortcomings and non-invasive transcutaneous CO_2 is being investigated in order to assess its potential to contribute with the same type of information as blood CO_2 measurements. The present study assesses the quality of transcutaneous CO_2 data by comparing it to the "golden standard" blood CO_2 data, in order to provide clinicians with a better understanding of the usefulness and limitations of transcutaneous CO_2 data in neonatal care. The study shows that for low transcutaneous CO_2 the error is relatively high and in most cases the true CO_2, represented by the blood CO_2, which can be regarded as the "gold standard", is higher than the measured transcutaneous CO_2. The opposite is the case for high transcutaneous CO_2. It is discussed how this is not due to any systematic error in the equipment, but due to the natural behaviour of noisy data.