Skip to main content
  • Meeting abstract
  • Published:

Renal effect of dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine, or norepinephrine–dobutamine in septic shock

Objectives

To investigate the renal effect of dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine, or norepinephrine–dobutamine in septic shock.

Design

A prospective clinical study in which each patient acted as his/her own control.

Setting

Teaching hospital Intensive Care Unit.

Patients

Twenty-two patients with septic shock completed the study.

Intervention

Fluid loading to an optimal left ventricular stroke work index (LVSWI) whilst treated with dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine, or norepinephrine–dobutamine each in a randomized order, which was adjusted to maintain mean arterial pressure >80 mmHg for 2 hours. After each 2 hours, a complete hemodynamic parameters and measurement of urine flow rate, creatinine clearance and sodium excretion were performed.

Measurement and results

All patients fulfilled the therapy goals after being treated with all kinds of the drugs. No statistical differences were found for right atrial pressure (CVP), mean pulmonary arterial wedge pressure (PAWP), mean pulmonary arterial pressure (PAP), mean systemic arterial pressure (MAP) during dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine and norepinephrine–dobutamine infusions. Epinephrine induced a significant higher cardiac index (CI) compared with norepinephrine alone and norepinephrine–dobutamine (P < 0.05). Compared with other three groups, cretinine clearance increased significantly in norepinephrine–dobutamine (P < 0.05), but urine volume increased in dopamine group as compared with epinephrine group (P < 0.05).

Conclusions

Dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine, or norepinephrine–dobutamine could improve systemic hemodynamics in septic shock, but their renal effects were different, dopamine acted as a diuretic and did not improve creatinine clearance, norepinephrine–dobutamine improved creatinine clearance without a significant change in urine output, norepinephrine, epinephrine had no markedly renal effect.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Qiu, H., Yang, Y., Zhou, S. et al. Renal effect of dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine, or norepinephrine–dobutamine in septic shock. Crit Care 6 (Suppl 1), P129 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1186/cc1584

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/cc1584

Keywords