Schuster D P, Markham J, Welch M J
Department of Internal Medicine, the Institute for Biomedical Computing, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA.
Crit Care Med. 1998 Mar;26(3):518-25. doi: 10.1097/00003246-199803000-00026.
To compare estimates of pulmonary endothelial barrier integrity obtained using two different tracer proteins.
Measure the pulmonary transcapillary escape rate with gallium (Ga)-68 labeled transferrin (PTCER(tf)) and positron emission tomography (PET) imaging and compare the results to similar measurements obtained with C-11 labeled methylalbumin (PTCER(alb)).
Laboratory investigation.
Mongrel dogs.
No intervention in one group of dogs (n = 3); oleic-acid induced lung injury in another set (n = 4).
Although PTCER(tf) was consistently higher than PTCER(alb) (mean difference: 50 x 10(-4)/min), the overall correlation between the two methods, after normalizing for differences in regression slope and intercept among the individual dogs, was excellent (r2 = .67).
The data support the continued use of PET and Ga-68 transferrin as an appropriate means of evaluating and quantifying lung injury.
