Does Intravenous Infusion Influence Diagnostic Ultrasound-Induced Pulmonary Capillary Hemorrhage?

Pulmonary diagnostic ultrasound (US) can induce pulmonary capillary hemorrhage (PCH) in mammals. This singular biological effect of diagnostic US imaging was discovered more than 25 years ago but remains poorly understood. Our objective here was to investigate rapid infusion of intravenous fluids as a possible stressor for capillaries, which might enhance pulmonary diagnostic US-induced PCH.

Rats were anesthetized with Telazol (Zoetis, Inc, Kalamazoo, MI), which yielded relatively low pulmonary diagnostic US-induced PCH, or Telazol and xylazine, which yielded relatively high pulmonary diagnostic US-induced PCH. Groups of rats were not infused or infused either with normal saline, 10% mannitol, or 5% albumin. Rats were scanned in a warmed water bath with B-mode US for 5 minutes with a 7.6-MHz linear array set to different mechanical index values to obtain exposure response information. Pulmonary capillary hemorrhage was observed as comet tail artifacts in the image and measured on the lung surface.

For Telazol anesthesia, all of the PCH results were very low, with no significant differences at the maximum output with an in situ peak rarefactional pressure amplitude of 2.1 MPa (on-screen mechanical index, 0.9). The addition of xylazine to the Telazol anesthetic significantly enhanced the PCH (P < .001) without infusion and likewise for the mannitol and albumin infusion. Saline infusion eliminated this enhancement, with significantly reduced PCH for Telazol-plus-xylazine anesthesia (P < .001); however, both mannitol and albumin infusion resulted in significantly more PCH than saline infusion (P < .01).

These results show PCH dependence on the specific intravenous infusion fluid and illustrate the complex importance of physiologic parameters for US-induced PCH.