Abstract
133Xe is rapidly becoming one of the more popular agents for functional studies of the lung. As a gas poorly soluble in saline xenon presents unusual laboratory problems. We have shown that the efficiency of extraction for gas volumes greater than 1 cc can be increased significantly by cooling the saline and the dose bottle prior to use. Leakage of 133Xe from multi-injection dose bottles was found to be 5-6% per day even before use. This leakage could be reduced by 70-80% by cooling and inverting the dose bottle. Plastic syringes containing xenon solution leak approximately ½-1% per hour.
The xenon was also found to extract from solution and enter into, and collect in, the plastic of the barrel and the rubber plunger as a function of time; for a 2.5 cc syringe containing 0.5 cc of xenon solution, l0% left the solution in 5 minutes and as much as 50% in 2 hours.