Arterial and mixed venous xenon blood concentrations in pigs during wash-in of inhalational anaesthesia

There are no data available on the kinetics of blood concentrations of xenon during the wash-in phase of an inhalation anaesthesia aiming at 1 MAC end-expiratory concentration. Therefore, we anaesthetized eight pigs with continuous propofol and fentanyl and measured arterial, mixed venous and end-expiratory xenon concentrations by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 15, 20, 30, 60 and 120 min after starting the anaesthetic gas mixture [67% xenon/33% oxygen; 3 litre min−1 during the first 10 min, thereafter minimal flow with 0.48 (sd 0.03) litre min−1]. End-expiratory xenon concentrations plateaued (defined as