Prevention of fatal hemorrhagic shock in dog by pretreatment with chronic high-salt diet.

The ability of a chronic high-salt diet to prevent fatal hemorrhagic shock was examined in 36 mongrel dogs. Twenty-one dogs received a dietary supplement of 9 g sodium chloride/day for 6 wk, and 15 dogs received the same basic diet for 6 wk but without the sodium chloride supplement. Hemorrhagic shock was induced in all dogs by bleeding into an overhanging sealed reservoir. After 3 h of shock, salt-pretreated dogs had a lower systemic vascular resistance of 0.70 +/- 0.02 versus 1.44 +/- 0.04 mmHg X ml-1 X min X kg (P less than 0.01) and a higher cardiac output of 53 +/- 3 versus 26 +/- 3 ml X min-1 X kg-1 (P less than 0.01) than was observed in controls. At 2.5 h of shock, the salt-pretreated dogs also experienced an increase in gastrointestinal (P less than 0.01), hepatic arterial, (P less than 0.05), kidney (P less than 0.05), brain (P less than 0.01), and heart blood flows (P less than 0.001) compared with 0.5 h of shock, whereas the control dogs experienced no increased flow during this same period. We also observed that after 3 h of hypotension there was a significantly smaller increase in plasma renin activity in the salt-pretreated dogs. Administration of 0.1 U X kg-1 X min-1 of hog renin eliminated the differences in systemic vascular resistance, cardiac output, and survival in five salt-pretreated dogs.