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Air embolism and the radial arterial line
C Chang1, J Dughi, P Shitabata
1Cardiovascular Research Laboratory, Queen's Medical Center, Honolulu, HI 96813.
Critical Care Medicine
|February 1, 1988
Abstract:
A clinical case of apparent air embolism through a radial artery line served as the impetus to conduct a study in primates to investigate the possibility of air embolism from the radial artery into the cerebral circulation. Using 133Xe cerebral scanning, we demonstrated that greater than 2 ml of air in the radial artery would result in retrograde passage of air into the vertebral system and then into the brain.