Pulmonary fluid balance following pulmocutaneous baroreceptor denervation in the toad

Pulmonary hemodynamics and net transcapillary fluid flux (NTFF) were measured in conscious toads before and following bilateral denervation of the recurrent laryngeal nerves (rLN), which contain afferents from baroreceptors located in the pulmocutaneous arteries. Denervation caused an acute doubling of the arterial-venous pressure gradient across the lung and a threefold increase in pulmonary blood flow. Calculated pulmonary vascular resistance fell and remained below control values through the period of experimentation. NTFF increased by an order of magnitude (0.74-7.77 ml X kg-1 X min-1), as filtration increased in response to the hemodynamic changes caused by rLN denervation. There was a better correlation between NTFF and pulmonary blood flow than between NTFF and pulmonary driving pressure. Our results support the view that tonic neural input from pulmocutaneous baroreceptors protects the anuran lung from edema by restraining pulmonary driving pressure and blood flow and perhaps by reflexly maintaining vascular tone in the extrinsic pulmonary artery, therefore tending to increase the pre-to-postpulmonary capillary resistance ratio and biasing the Starling relationship in the pulmonary capillaries against filtration.