Pulmonary vascular dilatation and diffusion-dependent impairment of gas exchange in liver cirrhosis

To test the hypothesis that diffusion-limitation for oxygen is due to abnormal vascular dilatation and significantly contributes to the arterial hypoxaemia of liver cirrhosis requires an experimental approach that detects both diffusion-limitation for oxygen and the presence of abnormal dilatation of pulmonary vessels exposed to alveolar gas. We therefore studied the gas exchange of a 64 year old man with alcoholic liver cirrhosis and severe resting arterial hypoxaemia (arterial oxygen tension (Pa,O2) 7.5 kPa) whilst breathing air and 100% O2 using conventional blood gas (CBG) analysis, the multiple inert gas elimination technique (MIGET) and whole body scintigraphy (WBS) following the i.v. administration of radiolabelled boli of macroaggregates with a minimum diameter of 15 microM. During air breathing, there was a consistently positive difference between the arterial oxygen tension predicted by MIGET and that actually measured (P-M Pa,O2, average 0.9 kPa). During O2 breathing, P-M Pa,O2 became negative, (average -12.2 kPa), and shunt estimated by the O2 method (% of Q') was consistently less than that measured by MIGET. Whereas both O2 method and MIGET estimates of shunt never exceeded 25%, the WBS shunt was 40%, indicating that a substantial fraction of cardiac output flowed through abnormally dilated pulmonary vessels, some of which were exposed to alveolar gas and, hence, participated in gas exchange. Although our observations pertain to one subject, we believe they provide the most convincing in vivo evidence to date that abnormal dilatation of interalveolar vessels may, per se, result in a significant diffusion impairment for O2. Furthermore, in view of the consistently negative P-M Pa,O2 observed during oxygen breathing, we speculate that such abnormal vascular dilatation may also have produced a significant diffusive impairment of one or more of the less soluble inert gases used in the MIGET analysis.