Zoll Capnography Update
Having some problems making the capnography thing on the Zoll work right? Try this…
The most frequent source of problems seems to be in not letting the monitor warm up before connecting the sensor to the patient, or not connecting the sensor to the patient quickly enough once the monitor is warmed up.
The WARM UP phase takes about a minute. If you use the capno monitor before it’s warmed up, you will likely get a fowl reading.
Once the WARM UP is complete, you have about another minute to connect the sensor to the patient via the ET Tube adapter or the oxygen mask adapter. If you wait too long to connect after the warm up is finished, you may get inaccurate readings.
If the monitor is connected to the patient and you believe it’s giving you wrong numbers, disconnect it from the patient, wait for all the ETCO2 values to drop to “----“, and initiate the ZERO procedure by pressing the “ZERO” key in the ETCO2 menu. The screen will show “ZEROING ADAPTER”. If the screen shows “DEVICE NOT READY”, make sure all the values have had a chance to drop to ----, wait a few more seconds, and press ZERO again. Once the monitor is zeroed, “ZERO DONE” will be displayed on the screen. Within a minute, connect to the patient.