Chronic Left Heart Catheterization for Microvascular Blood Flow Determination in the Rabbit: A Minimally Invasive Technique Using Specially Designed Port Devices

A modified fluorescent microsphere-based approach for determining resting and hyperemic blood flows in individual murine skeletal muscles

“…However, it may be possible to apply chronic, in-dwelling catheters that are exteriorized through the dorsal neck for conscious studies (Barbee et al, 1992;Maxwell et al, 1998) or possibly serial experiments, as other species will retain trapped fluospheres within peripheral tissue for many weeks with no obvious cardiovascular complications (Hoffmann et al, 2002).…”

Repeat Microsphere Delivery for Serial Measurement of Regional Blood Perfusion in the Chronically Instrumented, Conscious Canine

“…Acute, tissue specific studies in small animal models suggest that 15 μm-diameter microspheres do not significantly alter RBF or vascular tone [21,23]. Chronic microsphere preparations in rabbits [6,7,24] which have allowed RBF determination up to 11 weeks post-operatively. However, in these studies, multiple determinations of RBF were not performed, and animals were sedated during the injection of microspheres.…”

“…Multiple colored fluorescently labeled polystyrene microspheres are increasingly used for serial injections of microspheres [7,13]. Eight fluorescent microsphere colors can be used in a single experiment to estimate RBF without correcting for spillover of emitted fluorescence.…”

“…Fluorescent-labeled microspheres are therefore more useful for chronic experimentation, do not pose health risks for investigators, and avoid the high disposal costs of radioactive tissues and cadavers [3,7].…”

Direct Measurement of Blood Flow in Microvessels Grown in Matrigel In Vivo

“…Over the past 40 y, the microsphere method has been used extensively in laboratory animals to quantify tissue-specific blood flow [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. Small diameter microspheres injected into the left atrium mix with blood in the left ventricle distribute throughout the body according to systemic blood flow patterns and become trapped in capillaries of end organs.…”