Abstract
With the better treatment of burn shock and the improvements in the early care of the burned patients, inhalation injury has become one of the leading determinants of early mortality following burm injury.
Herein, we discuss the hematological and circulatory alterations after inhalation injury by animal experiments. For our experiments, typical inhalation injury was produced by wood smoke inhalation for ten minutes on anesthetized dogs and divided them into three groups; 1) control dogs without any therapy, 2) dogs with infusion therapy and 3) dogs with heparin therapy combined with infusion therapy. Examinations of the control dogs revealed that the platelet counts and fibrinogen decreased after inhalation injury. Examination of the dogs administered only the infusion therapy revealed that almost the same alterations took place as in the dogs without therapy. On the other hand, in the dogs administered heparin in addition to the infusion therapy, there were little decrease in the platelet counts and a slight decrease of fibrinogen. In addition to these results, in the heparin administered dogs decrease of cardiac output which was determimined by thermodilution method and PaO2 were minimum and their general condition was well controlled compared with the other two groups. These results suggest that hypercoagulation after inhalation injury and consequent microthrombi in the pulmonary vasculatures may play a important role in pathophysiology of inhalation injury, so the heparin therapy improved their condition.
