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Summary
A study of the effect of an intravenously (aminophylline) and an intramuscularly (acepifylline) administered bronchodilator on arterial blood gases is described. The 24 patients studied were all severely ill and in severe respiratory failure, in contradistinction to patients in all other studies in this jield. The blood gas changes were followed over a period of 1 hour and no signijicant differences were found between the effects of the two drugs on arterial oxygen levels and arterial carbon dioxide.
Further analysis of the pooled results indicates that the increases in systemic oxygen level following parenterally adminstered bronchodilating agents is higher when the initial blood oxygen is low. This conclusion suggests that the theoretical extrapolation of other studies, which have suggested that a fall would be catastrophic if it was to occur in patients with a low initial blood oxygen level, may not be true. Instead, it would appear that in treating chronic bronchitic patients in respiratory failure with extremely low levels of arterial oxygen, bronchodilators do not cause severe falls in oxygen.
Notes
‡ Paper awarded the David Dickson Research Prize