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Departments of
*Anesthesiology,
Surgery, and
Neurology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Address correspondence and reprint requests to Albert T. Cheung, MD, Department of Anesthesiology, Dulles 7, University of Pennsylvania, 3400 Spruce St., Philadelphia, PA 19104-4283.
| Abstract |
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Implications: Examining the time course of oxygen extraction, carbon dioxide production, and pH changes from the retrograde cerebral perfusate provided a means to assess metabolic activity during hypothermic circulatory arrest.
| Introduction |
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Delivery of metabolic substrate to prevent cerebral ischemia and infarction during the temporary interruption of antegrade cerebral perfusion has been one rationale for using RCP. However, existing experimental and clinical studies have not consistently demonstrated that RCP provided sufficient nutrient flow to support cerebral metabolism and prevent cerebral ischemia during HCA. Some experimental models have demonstrated cerebral tissue flow via RCP as high as 33%50% of that achieved with antegrade perfusion flow rates that were sufficient to support cerebral metabolic requirements (8,9). Other experimental models have failed to demonstrate a significant level of brain blood flow via RCP (10) or the ability of RCP to sustain brain metabolic function during HCA (1113). Clinical reports in small numbers of patients have demonstrated that RCP used during HCA partially restored cerebral oxygenation (14), provided cerebral cortical blood flow that was 10% of baseline (15), or maintained cerebral oxygenation (15). In a previous study, we found that brainstem somatosensory evoked responses could be recorded in some patients during HCA. However, RCP was not sufficient to sustain these brainstem evoked potentials indefinitely during HCA, although it did attenuate the rate at which the amplitude of the brainstem somatosensory evoked potential amplitudes decayed (16).
The purpose of this study was to examine the time course of cerebral metabolic activity during deep hypothermia after interruption of antegrade cerebral perfusion when RCP was used by measuring serial concentrations of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and pH in RCP inflow and outflow specimens. The time course for changes in the oxygen extraction ratio was compared with the known functional changes in brain electrical activity during HCA demonstrated by somatosensory evoked potential (SEP) monitoring (16). Impaired oxygen extraction or carbon dioxide production during RCP could indicate tissue malperfusion or infarction.
| Methods |
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Cardiopulmonary bypass was instituted using standard bicaval cannulation and cannulation of either the left femoral artery, ascending aorta, or aortic arch. A 26F superior vena cava cannula was used to allow greater cephalad flow during RCP and positioned in the superior vena cava so that its tip was just cephalad to the insertion of the azygous vein. The left ventricle was vented via the right superior pulmonary vein. Patients were cooled on cardiopulmonary bypass for a minimum of 30 min. Antegrade cerebral perfusion was not interrupted until the EEG became isoelectric (<2 µV for 3 min) and the N20-P22 SEP disappeared (amplitude <0.05 µV) bilaterally. At that time, the patient was partially exsanguinated, the superior vena cava was snared between the right atrium and azygous vein, and the cardiopulmonary bypass circuit was converted to a system for delivering RCP (4). RCP with oxygenated blood was adjusted to maintain a right internal jugular venous pressure of 25 mm Hg (transducer zeroed at the level of the left atrium) with the patient in an approximately 10° Trendelenberg position. RCP was interrupted for variable periods of time during deep hypothermia at the onset of HCA while the aortic arch was opened, when an absolutely bloodless operating field was required, when air had to be removed from the venous circulation, and when the arterial cannula was placed into the aortic graft for antegrade perfusion. The temperature of the retrograde perfusate was maintained at 10°C. After completion of aortic arch anastamoses, air was removed from the aorta and graft by allowing it to fill via RCP. After "deairing," a cross-clamp was placed across the ascending aorta, and standard cardiopulmonary bypass with antegrade cerebral perfusion was reinstituted for the final stage of repair and rewarming. The duration of HCA was defined as the elapsed time from the interruption of antegrade cerebral perfusion to the reinstitution of antegrade cerebral perfusion via the standard cardiopulmonary bypass circuit. The duration of RCP was defined as the sum total of all time periods during HCA that RCP was maintained. The "no-flow" time was defined as the sum total of all time periods during HCA when RCP was not administered. The fraction of no-flow time was the percentage of time during HCA when RCP was not administered.
Serial blood samples were obtained during HCA at different times after the interruption of antegrade cerebral perfusion. At each sampling time, blood was collected simultaneously from the RCP inflow (oxygenated blood entering the superior vena cava) and RCP outflow (blood trickling out of the left carotid or distal innominate arteries). Measurements of PO2, PCO2, pH, and co-oximetry were performed immediately on the blood samples and measured at 37°C. Alpha-stat analysis in which measured values were not temperature-corrected to the patient's actual body temperature was used. Oxygen content was calculated using the formula:
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All measured variables were treated as continuous variables. Repeated-measures analysis of variance was used to test for changes in measured variables during HCA. Spearman rank correlation analysis was used to determine whether patient-specific characteristics such as age, hemoglobin concentration, temperature at the time of HCA, and fraction of no-flow time were related to the changes in PO2, PCO2, or pH of the retrograde outflow. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to test whether the following factorstime after circulatory arrest, preoperative stroke, or intraoperative strokeaffected the OER or the RCP inflow-outflow gradients for SO2, O2 content, PCO2, or pH. Nonlinear regression analysis was performed to quantify further the change in OER over time during HCA with RCP.
| Results |
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Changes in the PO2 and PCO2 of blood sampled from the RCP inflow and outflow over time after HCA was analyzed from individual patients and from pooled data that included all patients. In 12 of 15 patients (80%) who had blood samples from at least two time points after HCA, the PCO2 in the RCP outflow increased between the first and second measurements (Figure 1A). In four of five patients (80%) who had blood samples from at least three time points after HCA, the PCO2 in the RCP outflow also increased over time. The mean rate of increase in PCO2 in individual patients was 0.24 mm Hg/min with a range of -0.16 to 0.64 mm Hg/min. The mean rate of increase estimated from pooled data that included all patients was 0.43 mm Hg/min.
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Patient-specific factors did not affect the rate of change in any of the measured variables during HCA with RCP in the group of patients without strokes. The Spearman rank correlation among patient age, nasopharyngeal temperature, hemoglobin concentration, and fraction of no-flow time during HCA with RCP showed no relation (P > 0.2) to the rate of decrease in PO2, the rate of increase in PCO2, and the rate of decrease in pH.
Linear regression analysis performed on the pooled data from patients without stroke demonstrated a significant increase in OER (slope = 0.01 min-1, r = 0.84, P < 0.001) and a decrease in the O2 saturation of the RCP outflow as a function of time after initiation of HCA (Table 2). In addition, the O2 content difference, PCO2 difference, and pH difference between the RCP inflow and outflow samples increased significantly over time after initiation of HCA with RCP in the group of patients without stroke (Table 2, Figure 2). The minimal oxygen content difference measured was 0.6 vol% 4 min after interruption of antegrade cerebral perfusion, and the maximal oxygen content difference measured was 8.8 vol% 53 min after interruption of antegrade cerebral perfusion in the entire group of patients studied (Figure 2). The minimal OER measured was 0.07 at 1 min after interruption of antegrade cerebral perfusion, and the maximal OER measured was 0.66 at 53 min after interruption of antegrade cerebral perfusion in the entire group of patients studied.
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Nonlinear regression analysis on the effect of time after HCA on the OER in patients without strokes using a standard bounded monotonic response function yielded the equation OER = 0.82 - 0.71e-t/40.3 as the best fit with a correlation coefficient of r2 = 0.71 (Figure 3). According to this model, the OER reaches 0.5 of its maximal value of 0.66 at 15 min after HCA.
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| Discussion |
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The metabolic changes observed in the study are also consistent with the metabolic changes observed in animal studies in which it was possible to perform direct measurements of cerebral metabolism during HCA with RCP. Significant gradients in oxygen saturation, PO2, PCO2, and pH across the cerebral vascular bed were observed after the interruption of antegrade cerebral perfusion in baboons subjected to HCA with RCP (10). Phosphorus 31 magnetic resonance spectroscopy has demonstrated a progressive decrease in brain intracellular pH, adenosine triphosphate, and phosphocreatine after interruption of antegrade cerebral perfusion in pigs subjected to HCA with RCP (11,17). In a study performed in dogs subjected to HCA with RCP, intracellular pH mapping demonstrated a decrease in brain intracellular pH, but the decrease was less profound compared with measurements performed in animals that were subjected to HCA without RCP (9).
Clinical studies verifying the ability to perfuse the brain via RCP provide further support for the assumption that blood specimens from the RCP outflow were a sampling of blood that had perfused regions of the brain. Methods that have been used to verify the presence of cerebral blood flow during HCA with RCP in humans include intraoperative brain perfusion imaging using technetium Tc 99m-labeled d,L-hexamethyl propylene amine oxime (18), direct measurement of cortical blood flow using laser Doppler flow probes that were placed in a cranial window (15), the demonstration of retrograde blood flow in the middle cerebral artery using transcranial Doppler ultrasonography (19), and the observation of an acute increase in cerebral oxygen saturation with the onset of RCP using near infrared spectroscopy (14).
Sampling blood from the RCP outflow to assess cerebral metabolic activity during HCA may provide a means to determine the safe duration for HCA with RCP by detecting the time point when relative cerebral ischemia becomes cerebral infarction signaled by an acute decrease in the OER. Studies in humans using positron emission tomography to measure regional OER in the brain have demonstrated that symptomatic cerebral ischemia associated with stroke was associated with acute increases in the OER of affected brain regions (20,21). In those studies, the OER of ischemic regions of the brain ranged from 0.54 to 0.67 compared with values that ranged from 0.35 to 0.45 in regions of the brain that were not ischemic (20,21). In contrast, the OER decreased over time in regions of the brain that evolved into infarction, a finding that suggests decreased regional metabolism due to cell death (20). In the extreme case of brain death, the average value for OER measured across the cerebral vascular bed decreased to 0.12 (22). The similarity between the maximal and minimal OER values measured by sampling blood during HCA with RCP and the OER values that had been determined using positron emission tomography suggests that the RCP outflow could be used to assess cerebral metabolism. The decreased rate of increase in the OER and oxygen content difference during HCA with RCP observed in the group of patients with preoperative or intraoperative strokes was also consistent with the contention that the RCP outflow samples provided an assessment of cerebral metabolism during HCA. Although a maximal safe duration for HCA using RCP could not be determined from the data in this study, it is likely that an acute reduction in OER or outflow PCO2 would signal infarction. Further investigation with larger numbers of patients, a wider range of HCA duration, and the inclusion of patients with intraoperative strokes would be required to verify this hypothesis.
An alternative explanation for the time course of changes in oxygen extraction, PCO2, and pH in the RCP outflow specimens was that the transit time of blood and retrograde cerebral perfusate across the cerebral vascular bed was slow. A slow transit time would mean that the composition of blood sampled from the RCP outflow shortly after the onset of HCA consisted mainly of blood that had been pooled in the arterial circulation that had not perfused capillary beds in the brain. Over time, the composition of blood from the RCP outflow would more closely resemble the composition of blood perfusing capillary beds in the central nervous system. Variable shunting of blood away from cerebral vascular beds toward other vascular beds with lower metabolic activity at the onset of RCP could also explain the lower OER at the beginning of HCA. Finally, changes in oxygen extraction, PCO2, and pH in the RCP outflow samples could also reflect metabolic changes outside the central nervous system caused by nonselective perfusion of the upper body via RCP. This consideration prompted the attempt to obtain RCP outflow samples from the distal carotid arteries when possible. However, these reasons would not explain the differences observed in the group of patients who had strokes.
In summary, RCP inflow and outflow blood samples were measured to assess the time course of metabolic changes across the brachiocephalic circulation during HCA when antegrade cerebral perfusion was interrupted. The observation that oxygen extraction was near maximal after 4060 min of HCA with RCP is consistent with other studies that suggest relative hypoperfusion during RCP. Reduced cerebral metabolism in infarcted regions may explain the lower OER observed in stroke patients and deserves further investigation.
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