A prospective study was conducted by collecting paired capillary and arterial samples of patients undergoing major operations at a tertiary medical center from August 2009 to May 2011. Subjects were a convenience sample of patients who had arterial lines and needed glucose testing while undergoing the procedure. Precision Xceed Pro (Abbott) handheld glucometers were used to obtain the blood glucose values. Our primary outcome of interest was the degree of correlation between capillary and arterial blood glucose values or the degree to which arterial glucose levels can be predicted by capillary glucose samples. We used linear regression and the Student
Seventy-two-paired samples were collected. Of the cases, 54%were major abdominal operations, whereas 24%were vascular operations. The mean values 卤 standard deviation for glucose levels were 146 卤 35 mg/dL (capillary) and 147 卤 36 mg/dL (arterial). The mean time 卤 standard deviation between the collection of both samples was 3.5 卤 1.3 minutes. The regression coefficient showed a strong positive correlation of .91 between capillary glucose values and arterial values (
Capillary samples collected intraoperatively are strongly correlated with arterial samples. Glucose monitoring in the operating room can be safely performed by collecting capillary samples for POCT. However, clinicians should still be cautious when interpreting glucose levels that are high, either by repeating the blood glucose test or by having samples sent to the laboratory.