CIRCULATORY COMPENSATION FOR DEFICIENT OXYGEN CARRYING CAPACITY OF THE BLOOD IN SEVERE ANEMIAS

Abstract

It is a well known fact that persons suffering from severe chronic anemias do not show the signs of anoxemia when at rest even when the oxygen carrying capacity of each cubic centimeter of blood is below the normal venous unsaturation, or, in other words, when the oxygen content of each cubic centimeter of arterial blood is less than the average amount of oxygen normally abstracted from the blood by the tissues during its passage through them. We recently studied a case of pernicious anemia in this hospital in which with a hemoglobin of 12 per cent.¹ and an oxygen carrying capacity of only 2.2 c. c. per hundred cubic centimeters of blood there was no dyspnea, no acidosis, no increased pulse rate and a normal basal metabolism or rate of oxygen consumption. As it has been frequently shown that the normal resting human organism abstracts an average of 5.5