Extravascular lung water following hemorrhagic shock in the baboon: comparison between resuscitation with Ringer's lactate and plasmanate

Baboons were subjected to deep hemorrhagic shock by using a resting transmembrane potential of -65 mv. They were then resuscitated with either plasmanate plus their shed blood, or Ringer's lactate plus their shed blood. As compared with their own preshock values, the plasmanate resuscitated animals accumulated more extravascular lung water, than the Ringer's lactate resuscitated animals. Another group of baboons resuscitated from deep shock demonstrated significant extravasation of albumin on postmortem analysis of lung composition. This increased tendency for extravasation of albumin after shock partially explains why resuscitation with plasmanate gave no protection against the formation of pulmonary edema. It is felt that plasmanate, and probably other colloidal solutions, shoud be used sparingly in the initial treatment of deep hemorrhagic shock.