Agreement Between Arterial, Central Venous, and Peripheral Venous Lactate in the Intensive Care Unit

This study is a single-center, prospective trial to assess the agreement between arterial, central venous, and peripheral venous lactate measurements. When an arterial lactate is deemed to be necessary as part of ICU management, a central venous and peripheral venous sample will also obtained within 5 minutes. All of the samples will be analyzed using the same analyzer as quickly as possible. A maximum of 10 paired arterial and venous lactate samples will be obtained per patient to prevent a single patient from dominating the data set. Additional data collected on a standardized data collection form will include primary diagnosis, intubation status, use of inotropic agents, hypotension (defined as a systolic blood pressure < 90 mm Hg), ICU length of stay and mortality. The Bland-Altman method will be used to assess agreement between arterial (A), central venous(CV), and peripheral venous (PV) lactate measurements. Approximately 50 patients will be enrolled in this study.