Carbon Dioxide Production of Whole Blood in vitro

Abstract

A RECENT publication¹ has shown the mean oxygen consumption of whole blood in vitro at 37° C to be 8.5 × 10⁻⁵ ml./ml./min, and the mean rate of increase of P co₂ to be 0.11 mm mercury/min. The addition of sodium fluoride was found to reduce the oxygen consumption by 26 per cent and to prevent completely the rise of P co₂. The authors commented that their findings were paradoxical “because oxygen could not be consumed without production of carbon dioxide”.