Hi everyone! This is NOT a homework help question--it's just something I've been thinking about since our lecture on respiratory failure this morning.
My teacher's lecture slides indicate that high cardiac output states precipitate hypoxemic respiratory failure. When I read that during my pre-lecture prep, I thought, "Maybe she means LOW cardiac output states," such as heart failure. Typos happen!
To me that makes sense because in HF, the heart can't pump out adequate amounts of oxygenated blood to meet the body's O2 demands. It follows that inadequate tissue delivery of O2 could lead to hypoxemia and eventually to hypoxemic respiratory failure. I think.
I did raise my hand and ask about this during lecture today. My teacher didn't provide an example of what a high CO state IS, but basically said in thinking it through, it makes sense that the body can't bring in enough O2 to meet the increased O2 demand of a high CO output state.
So can anyone provide an example of a high cardiac output state? The only thing that comes to my mind is maybe in the initial stages of cardiogenic shock: a patient's CO temporarily increases as a compensatory mechanism only to drop later on. I don't know if this is correct; it's my guess. I didn't find examples in my textbook, so I thought I'd ask here.
