Acid-base equilibrium of the blood in circulatory stasis

• Main Author: Dautreebande, Lucien
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: unknown
• Published: The University of Edinburgh 1925
• Subjects: Annexe Thesis Digitisation Project 2018 Block 20; Carbonic acid
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1842/32398

I) The characteristics of the blood stasis, namely the venous acidosis and the arterial alkalosis, are found in the different kinds of circulatory slowing, whatever be their origin, pathological or experimental. 2) In the course of the stasis the passage of the bicarbonate of the blood towards the tissues results in the fall of the alkaline reserve, in the arterial as well as in the venous blood. 3) The treatment of the cardiac diseases in causing the blood stasis to disappear makes the arterial alkalosis and the venous acidosis retrocede. The dissociation curve of the carbonic acid, both arterial and venous, returns to its original level. 4) Local hot baths reproduce experimentally the phenomena of cardiac recompensation: the local cold baths are accompanied by numerous phenomena of the cardiac decompensation. A conclusion of a more general order must result from this thesis: we have seen that in the diseases characterised by a circulatory slowing, the pH of the blood can vary from one part of the body to the other; an acidosis can even coexist in the same organism with an alkalbsis. The organism must be considered as a whole reacting locally to variable influences and sometimes of contrary signs. A single pH, arterial or venous, a simple examination of the urine, a single collection of the alveolar air may not give sufficient indications regarding the reactional state of the whole of the organism. Each function must be studied separately and simultaneously; only confronted results . will give an idea of the nature of the general' phenomena and their mechanism. Circulatory troubles are frequent in all kinds o illnesses, and they can, as we have seen, exist in the absence of any clinical sign of decompensation. Therefore we easily understand that under these conditions we risk committing gross errors if we consider only one value of the venous pH and from it draw conclusions concerning the reactional state of the whole organism.