Comparison of end-tidal CO2 and Pvco2 in children receiving mechanical ventilation

Abstract

Capnometry (Capnography) , refers to measurement of CO2 in respiratory gases and is widely used in operating rooms and intensive care units . Most clinical applications involve using a device, a capnogram (capnograph), that provides a numerical expression of CO2 concentration and a graph. BGA is a painful and invasive method instead and just provides a sectional view of ventilation status. Because of the conflicting data between adult and infant studies and the lack of data in pediatric patients, we evaluated the correlation between PetCO2 and PvCO2 in mechanically ventilated critically ill infants and children in an attempt to determine whether PetCO2 monitoring provides a reliable estimate of ventilation in this population.

Materials and methods: Following is a cross-sectional study with targeted population of mechanically ventilated children admitted to PICU of Tabriz children hospital. The Inclusion criteria of this study was the child or infant admitted to PICU and undergo mechanically ventilation and the exclusion criteria was ventilation via a tracheostomy , cyanotic heart disease and pneumothorax. All patients went through capnography via a main-stream capnograph beside the routine blood gas analysis. The Pvco2 and Petco2 of all 23 patients plus demographic data of them recorded by a predesigned questionnaire.

Results: In this Cross-sectional study, 23 children included. The mean age of the patients was 48 months. 21 of 63 data was from female patients and 42 from male patients. The most patients was diagnosed with pneumonia. The average end-tidal Petco2 was 19.98 ± 7.82 and the average Pvco2 was 40.62 ± 12.003. There was no meaningful correlation between Petco2 and Pvco2 in this study (P=0.002).