Question

Christopher is a 64 year old patient who has a long history of COPD. He presents today with a slight fever and complains of shortness of breath and coughing up green colored sputum. His ABG results are?

Answer 1

ABG analysis is done to identify the amount of oxygen, carbon dioxide, PH, bicarbonate level, etc in the arterial blood. COPD is a disease condition where hypoventilation or lack of oxygen in the body due to difficulty in breathing and blockage of the airway by productive sputum leads to an increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the blood. It is because of a lack of gaseous exchange in the body. In this case, you can see the patient is having shortness of breath and green sputum, green sputum id very thick sputum which interrupts the breathing or respiration. So in the ABG analysis, there will be increase in carbon dioxide level, decrease in oxygen level, normal bicarbonate level because the situation is not related to metabolism, the PH level may be normal or decrease or mostly decrease only in case of hyperventilation. So his ABG result is respiratory acidosis.