Evaluation of indicators of tissue hypoxia during progressive hemorrhage and blood retransfusion.

To establish whether the indicators of oxygen metabolism reflects the improvement in tissue oxygenation during therapy, twelve rabbits subjected to progressive hemorrhage followed by retransfusion were studied. The changes in oxygen delivery (DO2), oxygen consumption (QO2), oxygen extraction ratio (O2ER), arterial lactate concentration, venous-arterial difference in PcO2 (v-aDPcO2) and arterio-venous difference in pH (a-vDpH) were analyzed during two phases (above and below) the critical DO2 with the regression coefficient (slope). The main findings during the transfusion were: a) the slope, when compared during the two phases was not significantly different for O2ER, v-aDPcO2 or a-vDpH, while during hemorrhage each variable showed a significantly different slope, b) in the phase below the critical DO2, the slope was significantly less steep than that during hemorrhage for lactate and v-aDPcO2, c) in the phase above the critical DO2, lactate alone had significantly steeper slope than that during hemorrhage. In conclusion, it is suggested that the changes in QO2 best reflect the recovery from tissue hypoxia.