Abstract
Injecting Bleomycin (BLM) into either vein or pleural fluid of dogs in which retention of pleural fluid was artificially made, sequential changes of concentrations in the blood and pleural fluid were measured. On intravenous injection, the concentration in the blood decayed exponentially due to rapid excretion into the urine. Its half time was less than 20 minutes and BLM disappeared from the blood 6 hours after the injection. Even with these rapid changes in both compartments, a definite concentration of BLM was detected in the pleural fluid. On intrapleural instillation, the decay of BLM concentration in the pleural fluid was very slow and its half time was about 9.5 hours after the instillation. With these high concentration in the pleural space, concentration in the blood was kept longstandingly high and the excretion into the urine was very slow. These results suggests that BLM instilled into the pleural fluid filtrated out into the blood in relatively high concentration for long period and may induce an iatrogenic side effect to the lung.
