and arterial blood gas or ABG is a blood test we look at to determine the respiratory or metabolic status of a patient it helps us decide if a patient requires more aggressive oxygen delivery methods and helps us determine if our treatment for a patient is actually helping the patient or not reading abg's can be incredibly daunting so I'm going to break this down for you in the most simple way so let's first look at the basics there are three key players and three key facts we need to know before interpreting abg's let's look at our key players first pH is our main key player and will always be looked at first this will determine if we are dealing with an acid or a base problem we always want to know our normal ranges so the normal range for pH is 7.35 to 7.45 CO2 or carbon dioxide is our second key player and will always be looked at second CO2 measures how efficient our lungs are at ventilating AKA it has everything to do with our lung function think about it this way we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide so when we talk about CO2 we're talking about our respiratory function how well we are able to breathe out CO2 and lastly our third key player is bicarbonate hco3 or bicarb for short bicarb is a byproduct of your body's metabolism how well your kidneys are working to balance acid and base in the body okay three key facts we need to know before interpreting abg's fact number one know your normals memorize this chart there's no way around it just memorize it helpful tips is that pH and CO2 are the same numbers just flipped and for bicarb think 22 to 26 year olds love carbs so the range is 22 to 26. fact number two we stated that CO2 is a respiratory parameter meaning it deals with the function of your lungs remember that CO2 is an acid the higher the CO2 in our body the more acidic we are and vice versa the lower the CO2 in our body the more basic we are you can also think of it this way if I overdose on drugs I am not breathing as much which means I'm not expelling CO2 like normal so CO2 builds up and I become acidic and if I'm freaking out and hyperventilating I am breathing so much so much CO2 is leaving my body so I am alkalotic fact number three we stated that bicarb is a metabolic parameter meaning it deals with the function of the kidneys remember that bicarb is a base B for bicarb B for base all right let's interpret abg's I'm going to put an example on the screen and we'll work it out together there are three main components for a blood gas that we need to figure out number one is this an acid or a base problem number two is this a metabolic or respiratory problem and number three is their compensation going on to do this we're going to apply the tic-tac-toe method draw a tic-tac-toe board just like mine we label the top acid normal and base all we have to do is plug in the numbers and interpret starting with ph the lower we go the more acidic we get the higher we go the more basic we get we can see that the pH is greater than 7.45 so we're going to put the pH under the base column next we move on to CO2 and bicarb remember CO2 is an acid and bicarb is a base this is going to help for later CO2 is 41 which is in the normal range so we'll put that under the normal column bicarbonate is 33 which is in the higher than normal range so we're going to put that under the base column remember that bicarb is a base so the more bicarb we have the more basic we get we play Tic-tac-toe and circle three in a row and that gives us our answer bicarb is a metabolic parameter and our pH is under the base column so this is alkalosis and our answer is metabolic alkalosis so that's going to wrap up our view of abg's subscribe to my channel where I'll go over a more difficult example that involves compensation because that is daunting stay tuned you know me from my nursing school bundle you've seen hundreds of my educational videos on social media so long are the days of 30 minute YouTube videos I know I certainly did not have that much time to spend on one concept as a student and that's part of the reason why I'm adamant on short concise breakdowns that gets straight to the point my teaching videos are free cut out all of the fluff packed with memory tricks and mnemonics and deliver a bulk of content that every nursing student needs this is Arn explains teaching series