Effect on left lung lymph flow with a right lung injury. Kikuchi, Yuji, Lillian D. Traber, David N. Herndon, and Daniel L. Traber. Department of Anesthesiology, Physiology and Biophysics, and Surgery, The University of Texas Medical Branch, and Shriners Burn Institute, Galveston, TX 77555 - 0833
APStracts 3:0258R, 1996.
We have previously reported that smoke inhalation to the right lung will result in damage to the air-insufflated left lung. In this study we confirm these findings and determine whether this injury is associated with an elevation in lung lymph flow and pulmonary microvascular permeability to protein as indexed by changes in reflection coefficient. Sheep (N=12) were surgically prepared by placement of a Swan-Ganz catheter and pneumatic occluders on all pulmonary veins and the left pulmonary artery. The left lung lymphatic was selectively cannulated as shown previously (1). All afferent lymphatics from the right lung were severed and the right pulmonary ligament was sectioned. The caudal end of the lymph node was sectioned to remove systemic lymph contamination. The sheep were studied in the unanesthetized state seven days later. To ensure that lymph flow was exclusively from the left lung (), right pulmonary microvascular pressure was increased, a procedure that resulted in little or no change in as was previously shown. The sheep were then anesthetized and a Carlens tube was positioned to allow separate ventilation of the right and left lung. The right lungs of five sheep and the left lungs of two sheep were insufflated with cotton smoke. Insufflation of the left lung with cotton smoke produced a fourfold increase in that began 4 h after insult. Insufflation of the right lung with smoke led to a doubling of that began 12 h after insult. Changes in were associated with increased microvascular permeability, as indexed by the reflection coefficient. Control sheep (air insufflated into both lungs, N=5) showed no change in . Injury to the right lung resulted in damage to the left, air-insufflated lung, suggesting a hematogenous mediation of the response. 

Received 26 January 1996; accepted in final form 13 June 1996.
APS Manuscript Number R49-6.
Article publication pending Am. J. Physiol. (Regulatory Integrative
Comp. Physiology).
ISSN 1080-4757 Copyright 1996 The American Physiological Society.
Published in APStracts on 4 July 96