Multiple site analytical evaluation of a portable blood gas/electrolyte analyzer for point of care testing

Objective: To evaluate the analytical performance of the SenDx 100 portable blood gas and electrolyte analyzer (SenDx Medical, Carlsbad, CA). Design: Accuracy was evaluated by correlation of whole blood patient samples with the Nova Stat Profile 5 (Nova Biomedical, Waltham, MA) and the Ciba Coming 865 (Chiron Diagnostics, Medford, MA). Precision was evaluated using quality control materials (RNA Medical, Acton, MA). Setting: Critical care laboratories and operating rooms in two institutions. Measurements and Main Results:Precision studies performed at three different concentration levels for each analyte demonstrated intra-assay precision of less than or equal to 2.5% coefficient of variation and interassay precision of less than or equal to 4.0% coefficient of variation in all cases. Analysis of patient specimens in general showed good to excellent correlation to reference analyzers. Regression Variables are tabulated. Conclusions: The SenDx 100 portable blood gas and electrolyte analyzer is a simple and easy to use analyzer demonstrating acceptable performance compared with reference methods.