ABSTRACT
The diagnosis of acute appendicitis remains despite all medical advances a difficult task even for an experienced surgeon. In the submitted paper the authors evaluated retrospectively a group of child patients operated with this diagnosis during the last two years in their department, in an attempt to assess the contribution of US diagnosis in acute appendicitis.
Subject(s)
Appendicitis/diagnostic imaging , Acute Disease , Adolescent , Child , Child, Preschool , Female , Humans , Male , Retrospective Studies , UltrasonographyABSTRACT
Functional residual capacity of the lungs (FRC) was measured by a plethysmographic method in anaesthetized, intubated rats breathing air or a hypoxic mixture (10% O2 in N2), before and after bilateral cervical vagotomy. Inhalation of the with intact vagi, the drop in Pao2 was accompanied by a significant rise of FRC; after hypoxic mixture led to the same decrease in Pao2 before and after vagotomy. In rats vagotomy, hypoxia did not affect the FRC. The vagal nerves are thus apparently necessary for the increase of FRC during hypoxia in the rat.
Subject(s)
Functional Residual Capacity , Hypoxia/physiopathology , Lung Volume Measurements , Vagus Nerve/physiopathology , Acute Disease , Animals , Male , Pulmonary Ventilation , Rats , Rats, Inbred Strains , VagotomyABSTRACT
We examined the effect of cold vagal block on the functional residual lung capacity (FRC) in control rats and in rats with experimental pneumonia induced by intratracheal administration of the herbicide paraquat. The measurements were performed in a body plethysmograph in anaesthetized and intubated rats. Rats with pneumonia had tachypnoea and increased minute ventilation. Their FRC was 3.6 +/- 0.7 ml in comparison with 2.5 +/- 0.6 ml in controls (mean +/- SD). Cooling the cervical vagi, so that the Hering-Breuer inflation reflex was abolished (approximately 8 degrees C), resulted in a marked decrease of the rate of breathing and an increase of tidal volume in both groups of animals. The value of FRC did not change during vagal cooling (3.7 +/- 0.9 ml in rats with pneumonia, 2.8 +/- 0.8 ml in controls). In rats with model pneumonia, bilateral cervical vagotomy was followed by a normalization of the FRC (2.3 +/- 0.7 ml). In control animals, the FRC did not change after vagotomy (2.5 +/- 0.6 ml). We conclude that increased FRC in rats with paraquat pneumonia depends on intact conduction through thin, slowly conducting vagal fibres.
