This article aims to determine whether the blood lactate values obtained from measurements completed using four different point-of-care lactate analysers were in agreement with the values obtained from a critical care laboratory blood analyser.

The authors evaluated 50 dogs at an emergency service of a hospital from the USA during a two month period.

The prognostic value of measuring blood lactate concentrations has been confirmed by different studies in the human and veterinary literature. In the past, the widespread use of this important blood analyte has been hindered due to time and cost issues, but nowadays the portable lactate analysers are commercially available, inexpensive and easy to use and maintain.

The results indicate that the values the 4 hand-held analysers showed were in agreement with the critical care hospital blood analyser, although the agreement degree varied between analysers.

One of the four analysers used in this study was the Lactate Scout+, the only analyser in the market with a built-in Bluetooth for wireless data transmission.

Another analyser the authors used was the Lactate Pro, which has recently been replaced by the Lactate Pro 2, which is the improved version.

This article was written by Mark J. Acierno and Mark A. Mitchell, and published in 2007 by the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (J Am Vet Assoc 2007;230:1315-1318)

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Evaluation of four point-of-care meters for rapid determination of blood lactate concentrations in dogs