Abstract
In order to clarify the adequacy of peripheral vein injection site for recording the dye-dilution curve, ante-cubital vein (ACV) and femoral vein (FV) injection curves were compared in 32 cases without intracardiac shunt or regurgitation. Coomassie blue dye was injected into ACV and FV alternately at intervals of 5min and the dye-dilution curve was recorded by an ear densitometer. Ninety seven curves of ACV injection and 84 of FV injection were compared. Mean transit time (-t) and time constant of downslope (ts) were significantly larger and peak concentration (Cp) was significantly lower in ACV curves than in FV ones, although appearance time (ta), build-up time (tap), peak concentration time (tp) and concentration area (Area) were not different between both injection sites. Concerning the reproducibility of ACV curves, differences of ta, tp and -t between the n-th and (n+1)-th measurements were within 5 per cent on the average, those of Cp and Area were larger and ts was the largest. There was no significant difference of reproducibility on any parameters between ACV and FV curves. Thus, it is concluded that cardiac output can be measured identically in either of ACV and FV curves and distortion of downslope in ACV curve may lead to over-estimation of left-to-right shunt and regurgitation fraction.
