According to a study published in the official journal Anesthesia & Analgesia a new approach has been devised for checking the level of blood hemoglobin through a continuous spectrophotometric hemoglobin (SpHb) sensor.
Ronald D. Miller, along with his co-workers at the University of California, studied the accuracy of results obtained from the SpHb and point-of-care HemoCue (HCue) for checking blood hemoglobin. The results obtained using SpHb were then compared with the invasive laboratory Co-Oximetry (tHb) method.
For the study, 20 patients between the age 40 and 80, were made to undergo 78 measurements of tHb, HCue and SpHb. The measurements, before and during spine surgery, were taken only after inducing anesthesia to the patients. Researchers witnessed both observed and absolute variations between HCue and tHb and SpHb and tHb. Perfusion index, duration of surgery, tHb level, weight, and age were few factors on which observed variations were recorded. It was also found that age or weight had no impact on observed variations. However, the observed variations raised perfusion index values and decreased significantly with time.
The study demonstrated that although SpHb was parallel with the tHb values, it may not be precise in certain patients
Source: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/