In: Nursing
what is the rationale for immediately starting B.T. on oxygen?
The Human brain is one of the most metabolically active organs in the body, despite not performing metabolic work like skeletal muscle or the heart. The normal human brain consumes 3.5 mL of O2 per 100 g of brain tissue per minute, a value which remains constant throughout the periods of wakefulness and sleep. With the average human brain weighing 1400 g(approximatly 2% of the Total Body Weight), it is therefore consumes approximately 49 mL O2 per minute in the resting stage
When cerbral autoregulation is impaired, or pathological conditions such as stroke in which cerbral blood flow is disrupted , neuron function is directly or indirectly regulated in respose to brain hypoxia .
Oxygen is utilized in the brain almost entirely for the oxidation of the carbohydrate. Glucose is the preferred metabolic substrate for the brain and without glucose and oxygen stores available to maintain oxidative metabolism, hoemostatic brain function is quickly lost. To maintain this, oxygen is immediately started for patients with neurological imapirment