Effects of certain anesthetics on distribution of red cells in the dog

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Abstract
The animals were anesthetized with either sodium pentobarbital or morphine alone or in combination and the effects of these drugs were determined on the cell and plasma volumes and hematocrits on unsplenectomized and splenectomized groups. ‘Circulatory’ hematocrit is used to designate the distribution of cells and plasma throughout the circulatory system rather than ‘body’ hematocrit or over-all cell percentage; and BVRcells is used in place of the term Fcells. In unsplenectomized dogs with pentobarbital alone the venous hematocrit is significantly lower than the morphinized or morphine-pentobarbitalized dogs, and the BVRcells (circ. hemat/venous hemat.) is 1.02. The latter figure is significantly different from 0.89 with morphine alone or 0.90 with the combined drugs. Removal of the spleen affected neither the variability of individual dogs nor significantly changed the BVRcells. The action of morphine when given alone, markedly increased the plasma volume and when combined with pentobarbital resulted in a redistribution of red cells; thus the BVRcells was decreased for these groups compared to pentobarbital alone. These data imply that cell and plasma volume should be measured simultaneously and independently for determining the blood volume with the utmost accuracy.

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