Background: The Masimo Radical 7(®) is a new pulse CO oximeter designed to measure methemoglobin. The device has not been evaluated in a clinical setting.
Methods: In this prospective observational study we compared the arterial methemoglobin levels and the corresponding pulse CO-oximetric values of the Radical 7(®) in regional anesthesia with prilocaine.
Results: We analyzed 360 data pairs with methemoglobin values up to 6.6%. The mean bias and limits (± 1.96 sd) of the device were 0.27% (± 1.33%).
Conclusion: We found a high degree of agreement in measurement of methemoglobin between the 2 methods.