Evaluation of Two Handheld Point-of-Care Blood Gas Analyzers in Healthy Donkeys.
Authors: Bonelli Francesca, Laus Fulvio, Briganti Angela, Evangelista Flavia, Bazzano Marilena, Conte Giuseppe, Sgorbini Micaela
Journal: Journal of equine veterinary science
Summary
# Editorial Summary: Point-of-Care Blood Gas Analysis in Donkeys The increasing clinical use of portable blood gas analysers in equine practice has created a need to validate these devices in donkey medicine, where species-specific reference ranges and analytical accuracy remain poorly characterised. Researchers compared the performance of two handheld point-of-care (POC) analysers—the i-STAT System and VetStat—against a laboratory-standard automated analyser (ABL 700 Series) using arterial and venous blood samples from 17 healthy donkeys, employing discriminant analysis to identify which measured parameters showed clinically acceptable agreement. The i-STAT demonstrated good concordance with the reference device for venous samples but showed poor agreement for arterial measurements, whilst the VetStat device performed poorly across both sample types. These findings suggest that the choice of POC analyser significantly affects diagnostic reliability in donkeys, and that sample type (venous versus arterial) influences accuracy in ways that may differ from established patterns in horses. For practitioners seeking portable blood gas testing in donkey medicine, these results indicate that devices cannot be assumed interchangeable, and that the i-STAT may be more suitable for venous sampling in field settings, though neither device should be relied upon for arterial assessment without further validation. Substantially larger sample populations are needed to establish robust reference intervals specific to donkeys and to determine whether these analytical limitations reflect fundamental device limitations or breed-specific physiological factors.
Read the full abstract on PubMed
Practical Takeaways
- •If using i-STAT for point-of-care testing in donkeys, rely on venous samples for more accurate results; arterial samples may not correlate well with laboratory values
- •VetStat is not recommended as a reliable alternative to laboratory blood gas analysis in donkeys until further validation studies are completed
- •Larger studies are needed to establish reliable reference ranges for blood gas parameters in donkeys before POC devices can be confidently used in clinical practice
Key Findings
- •i-STAT POC analyzer showed good agreement with reference analyzer (RAD) for venous blood samples but poor agreement for arterial samples in donkeys
- •VetStat POC analyzer demonstrated poor agreement with RAD for both venous and arterial blood samples
- •Agreement between POC and reference analyzers varied significantly depending on blood type (arterial vs venous)
- •Canonical discriminant analysis identified multiple parameters that differentiated POC analyzer performance from the reference standard device