Anesthetic management of a patient with hemoglobinopathy: A case report

ABSTRACT

Hemoglobinopathy poses many challenges to the anesthesiologists. The central issue is the accuracy about interpretation of pulse oximetry saturation value during anesthesia. There are limited data with respect to the correlation between pulse oximetry saturation and oxygen saturation by arterial blood gas analysis in different hemoglobinopathies. We report here a case of a patient with hemoglobinopathy undergoing general anesthesia. Before the induction of anesthesia, various fractions of inspired oxygen were administered with concomitant measurement of oxygen saturation by pulse oximetry and arterial blood gas analysis. The saturation value by pulse oximetry, together with arterial blood gas analysis for oxygen tension, was used for evaluation of the patient's oxygenation status and speculation of the patient's oxygen saturation curve during the anesthesia.