OBJECTIVES To investigate the severity and duration of hypoxaemia in 703 children with severe or very severe pneumonia presenting to Goroka Hospital in the Papua New Guinea highlands; to study the predictive value of clinical signs for the severity of hypoxaemia, the predictive value of transcutaneous oxygen saturation (SpO2) and other variables for mortality. DESIGN Prospective evaluation of...

Cerebral blood flow and cerebral metabolism were studied in six patients with moderately severe portosystemic encephalopathy before and after a 10-day course of lactulose. As a result of therapy there was a mean increase in cerebral oxygen utilization but no changes in either mean glucose consumption or in mean cerebral blood flow. It appears therefore that the abnormalities in cerebral metabol...

In order to estimate the incidence of diffusion hypoxia, arterial oxygen saturation was measured in 104 healthy adult dental patients who were administered nitrous oxide-oxygen analgesia and who did not receive postcessation oxygen. Pretreatment saturation levels as determined by pulse oximetry ranged from 93% to 100%. When the nitrous oxide-oxygen administration ceased, the saturation levels w...

In 7 open-chest anesthetized mongrel dogs the left anterior descending coronary artery was occluded for 20 sec. Myocardial reactive hyperemia was recorded during air and oxygen breathings. The excess blood flow during the reactive hyperemia was smaller and the duration of the reactive hyperemia was shorter during oxygen breathing than during air breathing. It is suggested that the reduction of ...

We evaluated the effects of fluid challenges on oxygen delivery (DO2) and oxygen consumption (VO2) in nine patients receiving immunotherapy with interleukin-2. Fluid resuscitation produced an increase in DO2 from 15.7 +/- 3.1 to 17.4 +/- 3.5 ml/min/kg (mean +/- SD, p less than 0.001), which was associated with a corresponding increase in VO2, from 2.8 +/- 0.7 to 3.1 +/- 0.6 ml/min/kg (p less th...