if we want to take abg's one step further we can determine compensation to understand the basics of abgs check out my first video on ABG interpretation and you can follow along on page 78 of my comprehensive bundle compensation essentially asks is the body trying to fix the problem let's look back at our example in the previous question real quick we said that pH of 7.5 CO2 of 41 and bicarb of 33 turn out to be metabolic alkalosis now how do we know if we have any compensation in the grand scheme of abg's the body's goal is to get that pH back in normal range just like how we look at pH first for the tic-tac-toe method we are focusing on the pH when thinking compensation CO2 and bicarb can be thought of as our little helpers to get pH back to normal if they do so successfully we call this full compensation but we will look at that one later I want you to look at how much help CO2 and bicarb are giving for this example CO2 is in normal range CO2 is Chillin It is not attempting to help correct the metabolic alkalosis problem at all and because of this we can call it uncompensated metabolic alkalosis our rule of thumb if CO2 or bicarb are in the normal column this is called uncompensated let's look at a different example we have a pH of 7.30 CO2 of 50 and a bicarb of 30. let's plug in our numbers to the tic-tac-toe board starting with ph is this an acid or a base problem we see the pH is less than 7.35 so we're going to put that under the acid column remember the lower we go the more acidic we get CO2 is 50 Which is higher than normal so we put that under the acid column 2. remember CO2 is an acid so the more we have the more acidic we are and then we have a bicarb of 30 Which is higher than normal so that will go under the base column we play Tic-Tac-Toe Circle three in a row CO2 is a respiratory parameter and our pH is under the acid column so our answer is respiratory acidosis now how about the compensation remember we focus on the pH pH is not in normal range so we have to look at what our little helpers are doing to see how much they are helping as we can see both CO2 and bicarb are out of normal range which means they are both attempting to compensate the respiratory acidosis issue we see the effort of both helpers but since pH is not yet back in normal range we call this partially compensated respiratory acidosis rule of thumb it is partially compensated because both CO2 and bicarb are abnormal AKA they are trying to help but the pH has not returned to normal yet let's look at one more example we have a pH of 7.35 CO2 of 50 and a bicarb of 35. let's plug in our numbers to the tic-tac-toe board starting with ph this is in normal range so we're going to put that in the normal column CO2 of 50 goes under the acid column and our bicarb will go under the base column now we cannot Circle three in a row why well one because we don't have three in a row but even bigger than that the pH is in normal range this means that our CO2 and our bicarb have fully compensated the issue and helped return our pH back into range this is why I say always look at the pH first because you can stop right here we call this fully compensated respiratory acidosis now now how do we get to the respiratory acidosis term we basically look at where pH leans on the normal scale in this case more acidotic so we Circle three in a row that way and that is it you did great those are extremely hard to wrap your brain around keep practicing and I promise it'll get easier