Epidural anaesthesia restores pancreatic microcirculation and decreases the severity of acute pancreatitis

Figure 4 Arterial blood gas analyses. In Group 1, severe metabolic acidosis developed progressively reaching a maximum base excess (BE) value of -14 ± 3 mmol/L at the end of the experiment. In Group 2, BE values remained unchanged compared to baseline values. In Group 3, a mild metabolic acidosis developed reaching a maximum BE value of -6 ± 4 mmol/L at the end of the experiment. This result was significantly improved compared to Group 1 (¹P = 0.007).