The hydrogen gas clearance method for liver blood flow examination: inhalation or local application of hydrogen?

The combined method of hydrogen inhalation and local hydrogen production enable the determination of hepatic blood flow (HBF) and local hepatic blood flow (LHBF). LHBF was registered within a small superficial tissue volume of 0.5 mm in diameter by means of a multi-wire electrode having 200 microns producing and 100 microns measuring wires arranged within less than 300 microns distance between the measuring wires. The feeding current for hydrogen production was 1 microA, the potential less than 10 V. The clearance in response to inhalation was registered by means of the same measuring electrodes within the same tissue volume. Spontaneously breathing rats (Wistar-Frömter strain, 180-230 g bw, N = 19, ketamin-xylazine anesthesia, artificial respiration) showed the following flow values: HBF +/- SD = 0.50 +/- 0.26 ml/g.min, n = 48 registrations; LHBF +/- SD = 4.66 +/- 2.13 ml/g.min, n = 43. The validity of the combined method is demonstrated in the LHBF/HBF graph which summarizes the data of hemorrhagic and control animals, m = 0.1 and yo = 0.001. The correlation coefficient of r = 0.685 shows a reasonable correlation of the combined data despite the wide scattering of the individual values.