New aspects of acid-base balance.

Diagnostic and therapy of acid-base disturbances are based today on so called blood-gas measurements. Recent research shows that these data can only give exact information about the acid-base status of the extracellular body compartment and that the more important intracellular space which is the aim of our clinical efforts is excluded from these measurements and still remains obscure for the clinician. Recent results could demonstrate that the arterial PO2 does not necessarily correlate with intracellular O2 tension. pH another parameter of the blood-gas analysis seems to behave in a similar way. Results, obtained with the DMO-method, an indicator distribution method for determination of the intracellular pH, are presented which show that simple interpretation of blood-gas analysis can lead to wrong conclusions and mistakes in therapy.