Effect of withdrawal of respiratory CO, oscillations on respiratory control at rest

1601-1606, 1991.-We examined the effect of sudden with-drawal of respiratory oscillations of arterial Pco,, (CO, oscilla-tions) at resting metabolic rate on the control of respiration in 11 anesthetized paralyzed vagotomized dogs in normoxic nor-mocapnia. A double-lumen endotracheal tube was inserted so that the left and right lungs were ventilated independently. By alternately ventilating each lung, we could completely abolish CO, oscillations without affecting the mean blood gas levels (withdrawal of CO, oscillations). The CO, oscillation was cal-culated from arterial pH oscillation measured by a rapidly re-sponding intra-arterial pH electrode. Respiratory center out-put was monitored by use of a moving time average of the phrenic neurogram. A 3-min period of withdrawal of CO, oscil-lations was bracketed by two control periods (simultaneous ventilation of lungs for 3 min) to avoid the confounding effec