News From the Nursery Lab I

Okkkkaaaayyyy....I've got three stories today, and I'm going to tell 'em from bad to good.

Today we were talking about critical blood levels from blood gases. The Med Tech relayed a story of an event that occurred one day when she was working in Critical Care Lab.

A blood gas was delivered, and subsequently processed. The two MT's looked at the results, and aghast, looked again, not believing the numbers.

By all rights, the patient should be dead. Or, the machine had suddenly decided to go completely haywire. At any rate, whenever a critical value comes across, the lab immediately calls the attending doc, or the patient's nurse to relay the numbers.

The call was made, and the conversation went something like this:

"Hi, this is F from Critical Care and we have critical levels from the blood gas you just sent us on John Doe." And, she proceeded to relay the numbers to the care providers.

"These numbers are way out of line, and we wondered if you would like to redraw the sample so we can run it again to determine whether our machine is working accurately, because we can't believe this person is even alive with numbers like that."

And while F listened to the reply, G, the other tech watched as F's head dropped into her free hand, holding it in what could only be described as utter disbelief.

John Doe, it seems, an otherwise healthy male in his early 40's had presented in the ER with a painful erection. The condition which caused it is called priapism. The blood gas draw was drawn from his engorged body part. Ow. (I know, the editorial remark was probably not necessary!)

Blood gas numbers in a situation like this can estimate quite closely about how long the blood has been trapped in the penis. It's yet another tool (I swear I didn't mean that to be a pun!) the docs can use to determine whether or not the patient is exaggerating.

He wasn't. According to both the patient and the test results, the man had been in this agony for over 12 hours.

And, as far as the rest of the story, all the lab knew was that another test was ordered some time later and the numbers began improving, so the assumption was made by the lab workers that reduction of this unusual event was occurring.