Capnography: not just for cardiac arrest

Capnography has been used by the ambulance service for quite some time now—but it's not always part of assessing the non-cardiac arrest patient. Waveform capnography is embedded into the Resuscitation Council UK (RCUK) (2015) Advanced Life Support (ALS) resuscitation guidelines, but has not been included in many other areas of practice as is advocated by some healthcare providers. For example, author, firefighter and paramedic, Troy Valente mentions this early on in his book Capnography—King of the ABCs: A Systematic Approach for Paramedics. Despite him having written this in 2010, this topic remains an area that paramedics could learn a lot more about. It is only 69 pages long but Valente has managed to include a substantial amount of information, all tailored to paramedics.

Chapter 1 entitled ‘The Basics’ provides an overview of the technology behind capnometry/capnography, the various available options of measuring EtCO₂ levels and a detailed look at all phases of the respiratory cycle, and how they are presented in a waveform. Furthermore, Valente discusses causes of artefact that may alter the patient's waveform and how to deal with them.