Respiratory Acidosis

Re: Respiratory Acidosis

A-J — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 22:56:56 GMT

found this

Symptoms and Signs

Symptoms and signs depend on the rate and degree of Pco₂ increase. CO₂ rapidly diffuses across the blood-brain barrier. Symptoms and signs are a result of high CNS CO₂ concentrations (low CNS pH) and any accompanying hypoxemia.

Acute (or acutely worsening chronic) respiratory acidosis causes headache, confusion, anxiety, drowsiness, and stupor (CO₂ narcosis). Slowly developing, stable respiratory acidosis (as in COPD) may be well tolerated, but patients may have memory loss, sleep disturbances, excessive daytime sleepiness, and personality changes. Signs include gait disturbance, tremor, blunted deep tendon reflexes, myoclonic jerks, asterixis, and papilledema.

Re: Respiratory Acidosis

Dreamcatcher — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 22:23:30 GMT

Thanks Juliet, that's really helpful! Feel a bit embarrassed to admit I never thought about matching the breathing system to the weight the dog should be rather than the weight it is! Makes a lot of sense though thank you xx

Re: Respiratory Acidosis

Juliet Drummond DAVN (med) RVN D32/33 — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 21:27:01 GMT

i'm not sure that there are any specific symptoms.

i think that if your patient is underventilating them you can only assume it has it, and provide manual ventilation. underventilation can be caused by too low oxygen flow, circuit malfunction or slow respiratory rate, or rapid shallow breathing.

under anaesthesia any of the above, plus bradycardia could be indicative of hypercapnia.

remember to tailor the breathing system to the size of the dogs thorax, e.g. an over weight patient e.g. JRT weighing 12kg, still has the thorax of an 8kg JRT.

i hope this helps, i will have a look in my anaesthesia book at work to check if you like.