Hypertension and vulnerability to hemorrhagic shock in a rat model.

Trauma mortality may be increased in the presence of preexisting diseases such as chronic hypertension. We hypothesized that systemic and microvascular alterations accompanying chronic hypertension would increase the vulnerability to hemorrhage relative to normotensive controls in a rat model of hemorrhagic shock. We present a novel comparative hemorrhage model of shock vulnerability, quantified by "vulnerability curves" expressing physiological response to hemorrhage as a function of three matched shock metrics: cumulative blood volume, mean arterial pressure (MAP), and oxygen delivery (Do2).