Objective: Possible reasons of low reproducibility and non comparability of pO2 measurements in quality control samples are analysed. Methods: Testing of control sample preparation and meta-analysis of results reached in two different EQA programs. Results and conclusion: Strong dependency on the pO2 values and lack of information on the sample preparation before measurement are the main sources of observed enormous errors. Use of different calibration for different equipments is very probably another reason for large frequency and size of errors.

        Key words: pO2, reproducibility, comparability, Quality control, material preparation