[Diagnosis of the stage of adult respiratory distress syndrome in patients with peritonitis].

The respiratory function of the lungs was examined in 68 patients with diffuse peritonitis of different origin in the early postoperative period by laboratory, instrumental, and statistical methods and assessed by expert evaluation. The training sampling included 275 cases expertly classified as follows: health, stage I respiratory distress syndrome of adults (RDSAI), RDSAII, RDSAIII, and RDSAIV. Discriminant analysis was carried out fir the first four classes of patients. The best results were obtained when the following 6 variables were used: respiration rate, assessment of the irregularity of ventilation perfusion ratio (delta p/delta t), end-expiration maximal tension of carbon dioxide (FetCO2), resistance of the body site between the measuring electrodes in the course of tetrapolar chest rheography (Z), and arterial capillary blood pCO2 and pO2. The resultant discriminant functions permit the diagnosis of RDSA and help determine the stage of the syndrome development with a probability of at least 90%, which may be used clinically to validate the conclusion of a physician concerning correction of the treatment policy in this patient population.