In: Chemistry
Sometimes patients will recieve treatment for carbon monoxide, feel better, go home, and then all of the sudden have increased symptoms a few hours later. There is speculation that this is due to a delayed CO2 from myoglobin, which then binds to hemoglobin. Discuss why this might happen using an oxygen hemoglobin dissociation curve, as well as the potential partial pressures of CO2 and O2 once the patient returns home.
The oxygen–haemoglobin dissociation curve, also called the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve or oxygen dissociation curve(ODC), is a curve that plots the proportion of hemoglobin in its saturated (oxygen-laden) form on the vertical axis against the prevailingoxygen tension on the horizontal axis. This curve is an important tool for understanding how our blood carries and releases oxygen. Specifically, the oxyhaemoglobin dissociation curve relates oxygen saturation (SO2) and partial pressure of oxygen in the blood (PO2), and is determined by what is called "haemoglobin affinity for oxygen"; that is, how readily hemoglobin acquires and releases oxygen molecules into the fluid that surrounds it.
as you can see, the CO2 increases as the pO2 increases.