The Role of CO2 in Hypoventilation

The CO2 in the alveolar gas equation is just there to represent the patient's minute ventilation, not to actually be the cause of the oxygen going down. In clinically though, I think a lot of this could have been arrived at by examining the patient taking history and from observing their episodes of apnea while they're on the going continuous pulse eximetry. And under some circumstances, you would need an ABG to be able to prove that.