USE OF RADIOACTIVE XENON FOR STUDIES OF REGIONAL LUNG FUNCTION*

Journal/Book: Reprinted from the BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL October 20 1962 vol. ii pp. 1006-1016. 1962;

Abstract: From the Department of Medicine Postgraduate Medical School and the Medical Research Council Radiotherapeutic Research Unit Hammersmith Hospital London *This work was supported by the Medical Research Council. Summary The usefulness of two radioactive gases 133Xe and 15O2 has been compared in studies of regional ventilation and blood flow in the lung. The technique of their use was fundamentally different. Radioactive oxygen was taken as a rapid single breath and the blood flow deduced from the clearance slope during breath-holding. Radioactive xenon which is relatively insoluble was rebreathed from a closed-circuit spirometer and the ventilation of different regions was characterized by the time of washout from them when the patient resumed breathing air. During the rebreathing period xenon entered both well and badly ventilated areas of the lung and so gave more information about the badly ventilated areas than oxygen which was taken as a single breath. Comparisons of blood flow were made by injecting intravenously xenon dissolved in saline and observing the amounts evolved into different regions of the lungs. Xenon proved of particular value in studies of poorly ventilated regions of the lung because less information was available about their function from studies with radioactive oxygen. For most other purposes the two methods gave similar results although xenon was useless for detecting left-to-right shunts for which carbon dioxide labelled with 15O2 is of particular value. . . .

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USE OF RADIOACTIVE XENON FOR STUDIES OF REGIONAL LUNG FUNCTION* - A COMPARISON WITH OXYGEN-15