Lung water measurement by nuclear magnetic resonance: correlation
with morphometry.
Cutillo, Antonio G., K. Craig Goodrich, Krishnamurthy Ganesan, Suetaro
Watanabe, David C. Ailion, Kurt H. Albertine, Alan H. Morris, Carl H.
Durney.
Division of Respiratory, Critical Care and Occupational Pulmonary
Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, and Departments of
Pediatrics, Physics and Electrical Engineering, University of Utah,
and Pulmonary Division, Department of Internal Medicine, LDS
Hospital, Salt Lake City, Utah 84132
APStracts 2:0344A, 1995.
Estimates of lung water content obtained from nuclear magnetic
resonance (NMR), morphometric and gravimetric measurements were
compared in normal and experimentally injured rats. Average lung
water density () was measured by an NMR technique in excised
unperfused rat lungs (20 normal and 12 with oleic acid-induced edema)
at 0 (full passive deflation) and 30 cm H2O lung inflation pressure
(Pl), and in vivo (4 normal rats and 8 rats with lung injury induced
by oleic acid or rapid saline infusion). The values were compared
with morphometric measurements of lung tissue volume density (Vv)
obtained from the same lungs fixed at corresponding liquid
-instillation pressures. A close correlation was observed between and
Vv in normal and injured excised lungs (correlation coefficient,
r=0.910; P<0.01). In-vivo was also closely correlated with Vv
(r=0.897; P<0.01). The correlation coefficients between and
gravimetric lung water content (LWGr) were lower in the excised lung
group (r=0.663 and 0.692, respectively, for at 0 and 30 cm H2O Pl;
P<0.01) than in the in-vivo study (r=0.857; P<0.01). Our
results indicate that NMR techniques, which are noninvasive and
nondestructive, provide reliable estimates of lung water density, and
that the influence of lung inflation on is important (compared with
the effect of lung water accumulation in lung injury) only in the
presence of deliberately induced very large variations in the lung
inflation level.
Received 11 January 1995; accepted in final form 17 July 1995.
APS Manuscript Number A33-5.
Article publication pending Journal of Applied Physiology.
ISSN 1080-4757 Copyright 1995 The American Physiological Society.
Published in APStracts on 14 August 1995.