Lowest Blood pH

Specialties MICU

Published

What is the lowest Blood pH you have ever seen drawn on a patient?

Specializes in Critical care, neuroscience, telemetry,.

6.87 on a gentleman who went to bed with a bottle of whiskey and a straw. He lasted 8 minutes after we extubated him.

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Specializes in ER/ICU/Flight.

We had a 53 y.o. admitted with DKA. He showed up with a blood sugar of 1465, pH 6.7, BE -23.

He had a full recovery and eventually was discharged home. But when I saw that gas, I thought "man, we could've gone down to the morgue, drawn an ABG and it wouldn't have looked much worse than this!"

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Specializes in LTC, Subacute Rehab.

6.69 on a patient of mine, per ER report - two months later (Saturday in fact), she discharged from our rehab facility to home. GI bleed leading to respiratory failure - survived with mentation and facilities intact.

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Specializes in Pediatric/Adolescent, Med-Surg.
I had a newly diagnosed IDDM come in with DKA - her pH was 7.01 and she was managed on the ward! She was unique in several ways - she was 50, was breast feeding her youngest child (aged four), and only had a BSL in the mid-tenties (our scale is different from yours - it's around 450 mg/dL). She had a really healthy diet to start with, which probably helped,a nd she didn't believe she was really that sick until I showed her her labs and told her she should have been in ICU. She survived :)

I work on the floor and regularly see patient's on the floor with pH's around 7.1/7.2 If they're that low, they're normally pretty lethargic.

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Specializes in SICU.

ph 6.8

pco2 154

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