Abstract
It has been reported 1 that the intravenous administration of glucose to dogs under barbital anesthesia reduced the duration of the anesthesia by 50%. The original purpose of the investigation reported in this paper was to determine the effect of glucose administration during pentobarbital anesthesia.
Pentobarbital in doses of 40 mg. per kilo was administered to rabbits, intraperitoneally. At the time of maximum depression, as determined by muscular relaxation and diminished respiratory rate, 10 cc. of 50% glucose was slowly injected into the marginal ear vein. The results are shown in Table I.
It will be seen that the injection of glucose to normal-fed animals did not materially shorten the period of depression. However, fasting for 20 hours increased the duration of the period appreciably. This is in agreement with Reidel, 2 who obtained similar results on rabbits during “avertin” anesthesia. He reported that 20 cc. of 20% glucose did not shorten the period of anesthesia, but fasting doubled it.
Although all of our animals received 40 mg. of pentobarbital per kilo, their response varied between no apparent depression and death. Approximately 110 observations were made on the blood sugar level before the injection of the pentobarbital and the same number of determinations were made at the time of maximum reaction to the anesthetic. The blood sugars were determined by the Somogyi 3 micro blood sugar method. The results are divided into 3 groups corresponding to “no depression,” “slight depression” and “marked depression”. The mean blood sugar levels are shown for each group in Tables II and III.
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