Anesthetic management of a patient with hemoglobinopathy: A case report

Lee, Han Sook; Lee, Ji Young; Kim, Ji Yoon; Lee, Hae Jin

Case Report

Anesthetic Pharmacology

Anesthesia and Pain Medicine 2012;7(1):30-33.
Published online January 31, 2012.

Anesthetic management of a patient with hemoglobinopathy: A case report

Han Sook Lee, Ji Young Lee, Ji Yoon Kim, Hae Jin Lee

¹Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, Seoul, Korea.
²Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Yeouido St. Mary's Hospital, Seoul, Korea. lehaji@catholic.ac.kr

Abstract

Hemoglobinopathy poses many challenges to the anesthesiologists. The central issue is the accuracy about interpretation of pulse oximetry saturation value during anesthesia. There are limited data with respect to the correlation between pulse oximetry saturation and oxygen saturation by arterial blood gas analysis in different hemoglobinopathies. We report here a case of a patient with hemoglobinopathy undergoing general anesthesia. Before the induction of anesthesia, various fractions of inspired oxygen were administered with concomitant measurement of oxygen saturation by pulse oximetry and arterial blood gas analysis. The saturation value by pulse oximetry, together with arterial blood gas analysis for oxygen tension, was used for evaluation of the patient's oxygenation status and speculation of the patient's oxygen saturation curve during the anesthesia.

Key Words: Arterial blood gas analysis, Hemoglobinopathy, Pulse oximetry