Towards evidence based emergency medicine: best BETs from the Manchester Royal Infirmary. Capillary blood gases as an alternative to arterial puncture in diabetic ketoacidosis.

A short cut review was carried out to establish whether capillary blood rather than arterial blood can be used to assess acid base status in patients with diabetic ketoacidosis. A total of 25 papers were found using the reported searches, of which one presented the best evidence to answer the clinical question. The author, date and country of publication, patient group studied, study type, relevant outcomes, results and study weaknesses of this best paper are presented in table 1. It is concluded that while the correlations in the small study found were good, there is insufficient evidence to recommend adoption of this practice in the emergency setting.