[Arterial DSA using CO2 as a contrast medium: improvement of picture quality using a novel gas injector in an animal experiment].

The use of CO2 as contrast medium for DSA requires accurate and reproducible doses of the gas. This cannot be achieved by manual injection or by using injectors designed for liquid contrast media. For this reason a new gas injector has been developed which meets these requirements despite the compressibility of gas. The suitability and ease of use of the injector has been confirmed in experiments on 15 dogs. At the same time optimal volumes for different vessels with varying diameters have been determined. It has been shown that the injection parameters (gas speed and volume) in small vessels up 10 mm. diameter are not critical. With increasing vessel diameter accurate gas dose becomes important in order to perform optimal angiograms safely.