Partial carbon dioxide rebreathing

Abstract

Our results support the use of the system developed for breath-by-breath VCO2 measurements. The lack of agreement between partial CO2 rebreathing measurements and cardiac output was mostly explained by intrapulmonary right-to-left shunt, suggesting that this technique may not be appropriate for monitoring cardiac output in patients with increased venous admixture. In contrast, our results demonstrate that the partial CO2 rebreathing technique is reliable for measurement of the effective nonshunted pulmonary capillary blood flow. This technique may prove useful to guide ventilatory therapy adjustments in an attempt to optimize nonshunted pulmonary capillary blood flow.