
This is the first work evaluating and demonstrating the feasibility of near real-time VA/Q distribution measurements with the MIGET and the MMIMS methods. MM-S increased significantly after lung injury only in the lavage group, whereas MM-VD increased significantly in both groups.

MM-S and MM-VD correlated and agreed well with Riley shunt and with Bohr dead space. MM-VD was on average lower than Bohr dead space (- 0.09 ± 0.14), with lower and upper limits of agreement of - 0.24 and 0.05. MM-S was on average lower than Riley shunt (- 0.05 ± 0.10), with lower and upper limits of agreement of - 0.15 and 0.04, respectively. We compared MMIMS-derived shunt (MM-S) to Riley shunt, and MMIMS-derived dead space (MM-VD) to Bohr dead space in 349 data pairs. The samples were injected into the MMIMS, and resultant retention and excretion data were translated to VA/Q distributions. Inert gas infusion (saline mixture of SF6, krypton, desflurane, enflurane, diethyl ether, acetone) was maintained, and after induction of lung damage, blood and breath samples were taken at 15-min intervals over 4 h. Thirty anesthetized pigs were randomly assigned to lavage or pulmonary embolism groups. We aimed at comparing shunt fractions and dead space derived from MMIMS-MIGET with Riley shunt and Bohr dead space, respectively. MIGET-when performed using Micropore Membrane Inlet Mass Spectrometry (MMIMS)-has been proven to correlate well with GC-MIGET and reduces analysis time substantially. The multiple inert gas elimination technique (MIGET) using gas chromatography (GC) is an established but time-consuming method of determining ventilation/perfusion (VA/Q) distributions.
