Acta anaesthesiologica Scandinavica
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Acta Anaesthesiol Scand · Apr 1999
Luxury lung perfusion in end-stage liver disease during liver transplantation.
End-stage liver disease is accompanied by a hyperkinetic circulation sometimes combined with hypoxaemia. Nitric oxide overproduction has been described as a possible cause by dilating the vasculature and decreasing cardiac afterload. The aim of this study was to evaluate haemodynamics, ventilation/perfusion matching, alveolar and alveolar dead space ventilation and resistance of systemic and pulmonary vasculature during liver transplantation. ⋯ The low vascular resistance is accompanied by a high cardiac output. In spite of the high shunt fraction, these patients were not hypoxaemic. This is explained by the fact that the increased cardiac output leads to a decrease in arterio-mixed venous oxygen content difference and an increase in mixed venous oxygenation level, SvO2 86-88%, normal value approximately 70%. The VAeff/COeff in this study was approximately 0.5, i.e. the effective cardiac output, COeff is 235, 180 and 197% of the effective alveolar ventilation, VAeff during the three phases. Thus, about twice the amount blood is oxygenated as compared to a normodynamic situation, which compensates for the effect of the shunt flow on oxygenation.