Follow-up question to Dr. Berg
January 26, 2015 | 20,00 EUR | answered by Dr. med. Ralf Berg
Dear Dr. Berg,
I have another question for you. You are truly top in your field, of course you have to be as an anesthesiologist, you always give me good advice!
I have 3 terms from anesthesia (they are likely terms from an anesthesia machine) and I would like a brief explanation.
What does "Tapnea(s) 30 s." mean?
Does this mean that the patient may have respiratory arrest during surgery?
Or does it just mean that the machine will sound an alarm in case of respiratory arrest?
Is there a "Tapnea" alarm in every surgery under general anesthesia or only in emergencies?
What does RRv (s) 10/min mean?
Does this refer to blood pressure?
RR (CO2) 0 1/min
Could this mean that the preset respiratory rate from the anesthesia machine was "1 breath per minute" and I took 0 breaths, or could it mean something else?
Thank you in advance!
Best regards
These are indeed questions ..., with one of them not being completely sure if my interpretation is correct. Let's start with the 2 easy ones:
RR is actually the abbreviation for blood pressure measurement (Named after the initials of the "inventors" of non-invasive blood pressure measurement, Italian doctors Riva and Rocchi) v(s = variable of time) 10/min means that the device automatically measures and documents the blood pressure every 10 minutes.
T = Time Apnea in seconds means that after 30 seconds without breathing...yes, either an alarm is triggered or a breath is initiated, or if it appears in the protocol, an actual apnea occurred for 30 seconds. This cannot be determined without the overall context. And it is the case with every anesthesia device that there is an apnea alarm. Since this is a safety alarm and apnea has deleterious consequences, it is usually assigned to the "red alarms."
Now to the last one: What I know for sure is that this expression has nothing to do with respiratory rate. I am not sure what RR means here. It might simply mean interval. CO2 is carbon dioxide, and the rest indicates that CO2 is measured at a rate of 1/minute. (The interval for CO2 measurement is 1 minute: Practically, there are two methods to determine CO2 in exhaled air - either a sensor is directly in the exhalation tube (advantage continuous measurement possible, disadvantage very sensitive, artifacts due to condensing moisture) or as is likely in your case, a side stream sucks in about 200-300 ml of exhaled air once a minute and then passes it by a CO2 sensor.
I wish you a good night R. Berg.
