Blood gas pressures in impaired gas exchange

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Hey everyone,

From what I've learned and read around, gas exchange is responsible for excreting CO2 produced from cellular respiration and in exchange taking up the inhaled oxygen.

So it makes sense that in some sort of a gas exchange abnormality, oxygen uptake and CO2 excretion will be reduced. Thus PaO2 will be decreased while PaCO2 will be increased.

Though I've seen ABG results of patients with impaired gas exchange with both PaO2 AND PaCO2 results being abnormally low. This might be a stupid question.. but can someone explain to me how/why that can occur?

Thanks

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Hey everyone,

From what I've learned and read around, gas exchange is responsible for excreting CO2 produced from cellular respiration and in exchange taking up the inhaled oxygen.

So it makes sense that in some sort of a gas exchange abnormality, oxygen uptake and CO2 excretion will be reduced. Thus PaO2 will be decreased while PaCO2 will be increased.

Though I've seen ABG results of patients with impaired gas exchange with both PaO2 AND PaCO2 results being abnormally low. This might be a stupid question.. but can someone explain to me how/why that can occur?

Thanks

In short, the PaCO2 could be low as a compensatory response to metabolic acidosis, irrespective of the oxygenation. What's the pH and bicarb?

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