Invasive arterial line insertion is a common procedure in the intensive care unit ICU; however, it can cause unnecessary blood loss while procuring blood for laboratory tests. To reduce blood loss resulting from flushing out the arterial line dead space, we developed a new blood-preserving arterial line system: Hematic Auto-Management & Extraction for arterial Line (HAMEL, MUNE Corp.). Five male three-way crossbred pigs were used to evaluate the necessary amount of blood to be withdrawn before sampling to produce accurate results. We then tested whether the traditional sampling method and the HAMEL system showed non-inferior results for blood tests. Blood gas (CG4 + cartridge) and chemistry (CHEM8 + cartridge) analyses were used for comparison. The total unnecessary blood loss in the traditional sampling group was 5 mL/sample. For HAMEL, withdrawing 3 mL of blood before sampling yielded hematocrit and hemoglobin results within 90% confidence interval of traditional sampling group. Most intra-class correlation coefficients between the traditional sampling and HAMEL system groups were > 0.90. When compared to the traditional sampling method, withdrawal of 3 mL with HAMEL was sufficient before blood sampling. Utilization of the HAMEL system was not inferior to the traditional hand-sampling method. In addition, no unnecessary blood loss occurred in the HAMEL system.
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