Comparing the use of heparinized insulin syringe with safety-engineered blood gas syringe for blood gas sampling in emergency department: Randomized controlled trial

INTRODUCTION:Since there aren?t any injectors special for blood gas sampling, injectors including insulin injectors washed with heparin are stil being used in many hospitals in order to obtain blood gas samples. In this prospective study; we compared the use of safety-engineered blood gas syringe with heparinized insulin syringe for blood gas sampling by means of ease of usage, satisfaction of the patient and doctor, complications and workability in the laboratory in two months period in our tertiary emergency departmentMETHOD:Patients whom were planned to obtain arterial blood gas by the emergency department physician and who agreed to participate were included in the study. Patients were selected prospectively and were divided into two groups by simple randomization. The first data were marked by the emergency physcian who took the blood gas from the patient and the data after 48 hours were marked by the researcher to the questionnaire. Then, all the data were transferred to a data base program.RESULTSDuring the two months period, 550 patients were included in the study. Among the patients who included in the study there was no significant difference in gender, age, weight, height, BMI, and the wrist circumference. There was no significant difference between the injectors in number of retries (p = 0.489), VAS (p = 0.145), degree of difficulty of the process for patients (p = 0.109) and physicians (p = 0.554) . Complications developed in 115 (20.9%) patients during the process. The complication rates were significantly higher in the classic heparinized insulin syringe group (n:69, 25.1%) than the safety-engineered blood gas syringe group (n:46, 16%) (p: 0,0211).Local pain, the most observed early complication, was significantly higher in the classic heparinized insulin syringe group (n:53, 19,3%). Additionally, complications (p:0,003) and local pain (p:0,01) occured fewer in women whom arterial blood gas were obtained with safety-engineered blood gas syringe and the process was easier for both the patient and the physician. Infections (n:6, 3,2%-n:0, 0%) and local hematomas were more frequent (n:78, 41,5%-n:36, 15, %7) in the heparinized insulin syringe group(p=0.0213 and p<0.0001).CONCLUSION:There was no significant difference between safety-engineered syringe and classic heparinized insuin syringe by means of ease of process and obtaining adequate sample obtaining. Despite, we found that pain was less and and infections and hematomas were fewer in the punture site.