Admission blood lactate concentration has been shown to be a useful indicator of
disease severity in human medicine and numerous studies have associated
hyperlactatemia with patients at high risk of death who should be treated aggressively
regardless of the cause of the lactate generation. The degree and duration of
hyperlactacidaemia also have been correlated with the subsequent development of
organ failure.
Similarly, in a small number of studies about equine colic, blood lactate
concentration has been investigated as a useful prognostic variable . In neonatal foals
blood lactate was studied first by Magdesian (2003) who described venous blood
lactate concentration in 14 normal foals during the initial 48 hours post-partum. A
preliminary study about lactate concentration in foals presenting to a neonatal
intensive care unit reported that surviving foals had earlier lactate clearance.
The measurement of blood lactate concentration is traditionally available with a wet
chemistry laboratory method or with blood-gas analyzers, for clinicians working at
university or large private hospital. But this methods may not be easily accessible to
many practitioners in field conditions.
Several relatively inexpensive, easy to use and rapid pocket size monitors to measure
lactate concentration have been validated in human patients and athletes.
None of these portable lactate analyzer have been evaluated in clinically normal
neonatal foals or in foals referred to a neonatal intensive care unit.
The aims of this study were to validate the Lactate Scout analyzer in neonatal foals,
investigating the correlation between lactate concentration in whole blood measured
with the portable monitor and measured in plasma with the reference laboratory
analyzer. The effect of hematocrit (Hct) on the accuracy of Lactate Scout was also
evaluated.
Further, we determined the utility of venous lactate measurement in critically-ill
foals, describing lactate values in the most frequent neonatal pathologies, evaluating
serial blood lactate measurements during hospitalization and investigating its
prognostic value. The study also describes normal range for lactate in healthy
neonatal foals during the first 72 hours of life.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unibo.it/oai:amsdottorato.cib.unibo.it:719 |
| Date | 26 May 2008 |
| Creators | Mariella, Jole <1977> |
| Contributors | Castagnetti, Carolina |
| Publisher | Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna |
| Source Sets | Università di Bologna |
| Language | Italian |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Doctoral Thesis, PeerReviewed |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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