Investigation of the Relationship between Carboxyhemoglobin Level and End-Tidal Carbondioxide in Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

INTRODUCTION: Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning constitutes an important part of deaths due to poisoning in the world. It may be hard to diagnose CO poisoning if it is not suspected because the clinical features are non-specific. We wanted to investigate the effects of end-tidal carbon dioxide (ETCO2) measurement in expirium on the diagnosis and follow-up of CO poisoning.
METHODS: After the patients were diagnosed as having CO poisoning by taking arterial blood gas from patients who were suspected of having CO poisoning, ETCO₂ was measured using the sidestream method. The data were analyzed using the SPSS (IBM SPSS for Windows, ver.23) statistical package program.
RESULTS: A total of 146 patients, 106 with CO poisoning and 40 control cases, were included in the study. After the demographic data were evaluated, the relationship between ETCO2 and carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) was analyzed. No statistically significant difference was found.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to look for a relationship between ETCO2 and COHb. More studies are required to investigate the relationship between ETCO2 and COHb.