Performance of the New RAPIDPoint 500e Blood Gas Analyzer and its Comparison with Central Laboratory Biochemistry Analyzer

Blood gas analyzers are commonly used in point of care settings in hospitals to assess and monitor critically ill patients. The blood gas analyzer, RAPIDPoint 500e (Siemens Healthcare, UK), has been newly introduced. Here, we evaluated the performance of RAPIDPoint 500e for the determination of pH, partial carbon dioxide pressure, partial oxygen pressure, sodium (Na+), potassium (K+), chloride (Cl-), ionized calcium, glucose, and lactate.Repeatability, within-laboratory imprecision, and linearity were assessed according to CLSI guidelines. RAPIDPoint 500e results were compared to its previous version RAPIDPoint 500. For Na+, K+, and Cl-, RAPID¬Point 500e results were also compared to the central chemistry analyzer AU5822 (Beckman Coulter, Brea, CA, USA).The coefficients of variation of within-laboratory imprecision for all analytes were less than 5%, within the range of acceptable criteria. The linearity values for all analytes were confirmed within manufacturer claimed range. RAPIDPoint 500e correlated well with both RAPIDPoint 500 and AU5822. Correlation coefficients were over 0.95 for all analytes.The analytical performance of RAPIDPoint 500e was clinically acceptable.