Evaluation of a Heparin-Coated PO2 Electrode for Continuous Intravasal PO2 Monitoring

Intensive care units always require continuous PaO2 monitoring to enable fast and proper ventilator adjustment to patients need. Conventional bloodsampling techniques followed by bloodgas analysis are not able to monitor these sudden changes of the oxygen partial pressure. A better solution would be an intravasal PaO2 electrode. Monitoring the arterial and venous oxygen partial pressure simultanuously will give information about the oxygen extraction rate; threatening perfusion disturbances and acute changes during spontaneous respiration can be detected immediately. The direct effect of extracorporal oxygenators during open heart surgery can be watched; there are also possibilities of closed loop feed back regulation of the respirator for optimal ventilator settings in ARDS-patients.