A Comparison of Intracardiac and Intravenous Injections for the Measurement of Cardiac Output by the Dilution Technic

Abstract

Using H 3 P 32 O 4 and the dye T-1824 as labels, simultaneous injections were made into the right ventricle and into a peripheral vein, and cardiac output was calculated from the individual flow-dilution curves. When a discrepancy beyond the range expected from the use of the two labels occurred, the output from the central injection was always the larger (approximately one-third of the observations, in a small series). This may be attributable to progressive blood loss from sampling, since delayed intraventricular injections under comparable conditions, measure a similarly reduced cardiac output.