High-resolution maps of regional ventilation utilizing inhaled fluorescent microspheres. Robertson, H. Thomas, Robb W. Glenny, Derek Stanford, Lynn M. McInnes, Daniel L. Luchtel, David Covert. Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, and Departments of Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Health, and Statistics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195 -6522
APStracts 3:0525A, 1996.
The regional deposition of an inhaled aerosol of 1.0-[mu]m diameter fluorescent microspheres (FMS) was used to produce high-resolution maps of regional ventilation. Five anesthetized, prone, mechanically ventilated pigs received two ten-minute inhalations of pairs of different FMS labels, accompanied by intravenous injection of 15.0 -[mu]m radioactive microspheres. The lungs were air dried and cut into 1.9-cm3 pieces, with notation of the spatial coordinates for each piece. Following measurement of radioactive energy peaks, the tissue samples were soaked in 2-ethoxyethyl acetate and fluorescent emission peaks were recorded for the wavelengths specific to each fluorescence label. The correlation of fluorescence activity between simultaneously administered inhaled FMS ranged from 0.98 to 0.99. The mean coefficient of variation for ventilation for all ten trials (47.9&8.1%) was similar to that for perfusion (46.2&6.3%). No physiologically significant gravitational gradient of ventilation or perfusion was present in the prone animals. The strongest predictor of the magnitude of regional ventilation among all animals was regional perfusion (r=0.77&0.13).

Received 30 April 1996; accepted in final form 28 October 1996.
APS Manuscript Number A414-6.
Article publication pending Journal of Applied Physiology.
ISSN 1080-4757 Copyright 1996 The American Physiological Society.
Published in APStracts on 31 December 1996