Oxygen consumption is the rate at which the body uses oxygen, calculated from how much oxygen content drops between arterial and venous blood, multiplied by how much blood the heart pumps.
Normal resting range (~200–250 mL/min) and above.
Mildly low — reduced delivery or extraction.
Low consumption.
Very low — check inputs and clinical context.
Given: cardiac output 5 L/min, CaO₂ 20, CvO₂ 15 mL/dL.
5 mL/dLThe oxygen the tissues extract, scaled by blood flow, is what the body consumes.
It's a unit conversion. Cardiac output is in L/min and oxygen content is in mL/dL, so multiplying by 10 aligns the units and gives VO₂ in mL/min.
About 200–250 mL/min at rest, roughly 3–4 mL/kg/min. It rises sharply with exercise, fever, and other high-demand states.
It states that oxygen consumption equals blood flow multiplied by the amount of oxygen each unit of blood gives up — cardiac output times the arterial-venous content difference.
Yes — rearranging the Fick equation lets you solve for cardiac output if VO₂ is measured directly, which is the basis of the Fick cardiac-output method.