Inert Gas Diffusion Method for Measurement of Blood Flow Using Saturation Techniques

Abstract

The isolated gastrocnemius muscle of the cat was used to study the relation between the desaturation of 133 xenon measured by external monitoring, and blood flow measured directly by a dropcounter. The metered blood flow agreed with that calculated from the initial slope of the desaturation curve from tissue equilibrated by prolonged intra-arterial infusion and also by atraumatic gas labelling of a local area of the muscle (approximately 0.15% of the muscle weight). In this sense the concept of uniform distribution of blood flow in skeletal muscle has received substantial support. The identity of the results obtained by local gas labelling and by intra-arterial equilibration of the whole muscle with gas implies that there is, at least initially, diffusion equilibrium between tissue and blood in both. However, the clearance curves could in no instance be fitted by a single exponential function. This indicates that the diffusion equilibrium is not maintained after the initial phase. It is suggested that this is not due to the presence of anatomical arteriovenous shunts or other types of uneven perfusion, but to counter current exchange of inert gas through the walls of vessels, i.e. shunting by diffusion explains the shape of the desaturation curves.