Oxygen metabolism under various bypass flow conditions during cardiopulmonary support in awake goats

Despite its wide clinical application, patient recovery from cardiopulmonary support (CPS) is not necessarily satisfactory. To clarify what influence CPS has on organ perfusion, we investigated the oxygen metabolism under various bypass flow (BF) conditions in a series of chronic animal CPS experiments. The CPS system, which consists of a pulsatile ventricular assist device and a compact artificial lung was installed without anesthesia in 6 adult goats weighing 49-51 kg. BF was adjusted stepwise from 0% to 50%, 75%, 90%, and 100% of total systemic blood flow (TSF) by balancing the pulmonary arterial flow. The animals' TSF and oxygen delivery (DO2) were sufficiently maintained throughout the experiments. The oxygen consumption (VO2) and the oxygen extraction rate (ExO2) increased from 178+/-14 to 342+/-19 ml/min, and from 28+/-2% to 64+/-1%, respectively, in proportion to the increase of CPBF dependency from 0% to 100%. The blood lactate level did not change appreciably even at 90% BF from 5.7+/-0.3 to 11.2+/-1.2 mg/dl, but drastically elevated to 23.5+/-4.6 mg/dl at the total bypass. This indicates that CPS leads to a relative lack of oxygen and can induce organ dysfunction due to increasing VO2 and ExO2 in proportion to the increase of BF dependence even if TSF and DO2 are sufficiently maintained.