What's up everyone I've got another quick and easy episode for you today. If you're not aware already the quick and easy episodes are a series on the EasyMed YouTube channel where medical topics are made easy in a couple minutes. So take a look at previous episodes you're going to learn all sorts of mnemonics tricks and strategies that make the content easy to learn and remember. Today we're going to make blood gases simple using the tic-tac-toe method. If you're not aware of this method already, it's definitely worth watching this video.
Many of us have experienced those long lectures about blood gases that still leave us confused. It doesn't need to be like that. and I'm going to show you that you can learn blood gases in only a few minutes. So if you find the video content useful, please consider subscribing to the EasyMed channel that way you don't miss out on future videos that make medicine easy.
Let's start off by looking at the normal values for a blood gas. A normal pH is 7.35 to 7.45. A normal CO2 is 35 to 45 and look how easy that is to remember. Take the decimals in the pH 35 to 45 and now you have your 35 to 45 range for your CO2. The normal range for bicarb is 22 to 26. There are really three main components to a blood gas that you need to figure out.
Is it an acid or a base? Is it metabolic or respiratory? And is there compensation present? So let's take a look at an example blood gas and then apply the tic-tac-toe method and you'll see how easy it is. So you're gonna draw your tic-tac-toe board and what you're gonna do is you're gonna label the top acid, normal, and base.
And then we're gonna simply plug in the numbers. So starting with the pH, anything less than 7.35 reflects acidosis. Anything greater than 7.45 reflects alkalosis.
Let's go back to our example and we can see that the pH is greater than 7.45. So we're going to put the pH under the base column. Then we're going to move on to the CO2 and bicarbonate.
But let's first remind ourselves that bicarb is a base and CO2 is an acid. You can remember this because bicarb and base both start with B. And CO2 starts with the C and there's a C in acid. So going back to our example we can see that CO2 is 41 which is in the normal range. So we're going to label CO2 under the normal column.
Then we're going to move on to bicarbonate and we can see that it's 32 which is greater than the normal range of 22 to 26. Well we know that bicarb is a base so if we have a lot of base we're going to put it under the base column. If the bicarb would have been normal then we would have put it under the normal column. And if bicarb would have been low, then we have less base, so we would have put it under the acid column. So now that we have plugged in all of our numbers, we're going to play tic-tac-toe and circle three in a row, and that's going to give us our answer.
To make it even easier, you never go diagonal. It's always up and down in order for this to work. So we're going to circle base, pH, and bicarb, and we have our answer.
Bicarb is related to metabolic, and CO2 is related to respiratory. So because bicarb is circled, it's metabolic, and our pH is under the base column, so it's alkalosis. So we have a metabolic alkalosis present.
Now we have to decide if compensation is present. Well the CO2 is under the normal column, so it's not doing anything to compensate for this. So it's a metabolic alkalosis without compensation.
Let's now take a look at an example that involves compensation. We're going to draw the tic-tac-toe board again and plug in the numbers. So our pH is less than 7.35, so we'll put the pH under the acid column. Our CO2 is 65, which is greater than the normal 35 to 45 range.
We know that CO2 is an acid. So because we have extra acid, it's going to go under the acid column. Our bicarb is 30, which is greater than the normal range of 22 to 26. We know that bicarb is a base, so if we have more base than normal, it's going to go under the base column. Now we're going to play tic-tac-toe and circle three in a row, and that's going to give us our answer. We can see that acid and pH are circled, so we know this is going to be an acidosis.
And then CO2 is circled. We know CO2 is related to respiratory and bicarb is related to metabolic, so this is a respiratory acidosis. Now we have to decide if compensation is present.
We'll take a look at the bicarb. It's not under the normal column, it's under the base column, so it is trying to compensate for that acidosis. So we have a respiratory acidosis with compensation.
Hopefully this tic-tac-toe method will give you an easy way to remember blood gases. If you found If you found the video content useful, please like or comment below and consider subscribing to the EasyMed YouTube channel. That way you can catch all the future videos that make medicine easy.
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It's filled with all sorts of medical topics that are made easy. Thanks for watching and I hope you check out future videos.