Abg assistant—towards an understanding of complex acid-base disorders

Abstract

The ability to diagnose acid–base imbalances correctly is essential for physicians and other healthcare workers. Despite its importance, it is often considered too complex and confusing. Although most people dealing with arterial blood gases (ABGs) do not usually have problems with acid–base disorder assessment, such an analysis is also carried out by other healthcare workers for whom this can be a challenging task. Many aspects may be problematic, partly due to multiple data analysis methods and no definitive statement on which one is better. According to our survey, the correctness of arterial blood gas analysis is unsatisfactory, especially in mixed disorders, which do not always manifest an obvious set of symptoms. Therefore, ABG parameters can be used as an established biomarker panel, which is considered to be a powerful tool for personalized medicine. Moreover, using different approaches to analyze acid–base disorders can lead to varying diagnoses in some cases. Because of these problems, we developed a mobile application that can spot diagnostic differences by taking into account physiological and chemical approaches, including their vari-ants, with a corrected anion gap. The proposed application is characterized by a high percentage of correct analyses and can be an essential aid for diagnosing acid–base disturbances.