Peritoneal blood flow during acute experimental pancreatitis. The role of peritoneal exudate.

Peritoneal blood flow is closely related to the pathophysiology of peritoneal exudate during acute pancreatitis. Peritoneal blood flow was determined by the radioactive microsphere method before and 5 h after the beginning of the experiment in 39 piglets with acute hemorrhagic pancreatis, acute edemic pancreatitis, or slowly progressing hypovolemia. The effect of hemorrhagic ascitic fluid was also studied. Cardiac output was determined by thermodilution. Acute experimental hemorrhagic pancreatitis and intraperitoneally injected hemorrhagic ascitic fluid per se caused similar and significant increases in peritoneal blood flow, the increase being unaffected by the correction of the secondary hypovolemia in acute hemorrhagic pancreatitis. Laparotomy combined with duodenotomy also caused a similar increase in peritoneal blood flow. Hypovolemia alone caused only insignificant reduction in peritoneal blood flow. Peritoneal exudate accumulating in the peritoneal cavity during early acute experimental hemorrhagic pancreatitis causes a significant increase in peritoneal blood flow which is unaffected by the correction of the secondary hypovolemia during acute pancreatitis. The inflammatory increase in peritoneal blood flow during acute pancreatitis is evidently a major factor in the accumulation of peritoneal exudate during the disease.