Extracorporeal oxygen and CO2 transfer of a polypropylene dimpled membrane lung with variable secondary flows:...

In vivo gas transfer performance, during veno-venous bypass, is presented for one form of the Oxford membrane lung in which vortex mixing is induced in blood flow across a dimpled polypropylene membrane. Good agreement has been found with in vitro data presented in an earlier paper. Two experiments were extended to attain total extracorporeal CO2 removal with apnoeic diffusion oxygenation to motionless lungs. Measurements of arterial oxygen partial pressure during apnoea suggest that the time-constant for equilibration of alveolar nitrogen partial pressure with that on the gas side of the membrane lung is of the order of 100 min.