الفهرس 
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Abstract
Critically ill patients require intensive monitoring during their care, both to detect and access acute changes that might occur and to determine the response to a therapeutic intervention. Blood gas sampling is a modality that provides important information on a patient’s metabolic status as well as their overall oxygenation. Oxygen is essential to life; the body can live for only a few minutes without it since there are no body stores of oxygen. (50) Oxygenation may be measured using an arterial blood gases by evaluating PaO2 and SaO2.
Arterial blood gases are a reflection of the normal and abnormal blood gas values in the body and should be considered a look at the entire body. They should be the first laboratory test ordered and drawn in a number of acute conditions that enter intensive care unit. Clinicians have been looking for alternatives to arterial blood gas sampling in both children and adults. Few studies have investigated arterial, venous and capillary blood gases samples and the correlation between theses values, but the accuracy of predicting arterial from venous and capillary values were limited.
Capillary and venous blood gases samplings are easier to obtain and both may avoid the risks of arterial punctures. Nurses are responsible to obtain blood samples and they should be adequately prepared to perform this procedure. This conventional method of obtaining blood from an arterial puncture may not be feasible in some clinical situations. Acid-base analysis is an essential tool and commonly encountered in the intensive care unit.
Therefor, this study was conducted to compare the arterial, venous and capillary blood gases values for critically ill patients.
This study was carried out in the adult intensive care units The size of study sample was 200 patients admitted to the intensive care units of the Main University Hospital namely: unit I, unit III. Data were collected in period of one year starting from October 2006 till september 2007. The tool used in this study was Patient’s Assessment Sheet, it was developed and used by the researcher after reviewing of the related literature, and it was comprised four parts: part (I): Patient’s Characteristics that include information about patient’s age, sex, date of admission. part (II): Health Relevant Data that included past and present medical history, diagnosis, medications administered, and vital signs. part (III): respiratory monitoring and supporting that included oxygen saturation by pulse oximeter and Level of consciousness, and information about artificial airway, ventilator parameters. part (IV): Blood Sampling Parameters that include values of arterial, venous, and capillary blood gases; site of blood withdrawal; number of attempts to withdraw blood from each sample, each sample time; arterial blood gases indications, and time intervals between the different samples.