Morphological character of lung injury and its functional implication in adult rats subjected to cerebral ischemina/reperfusion injury

Abstract

BackroundStroke‐associated pneumonia (SAP) is the most common complication after stroke, which increases the long‐term mortality. In the acute phase of brain ischemia, obvious pathological injury is observed, which acts as a main inducer for SAP. In this study, we sought to investigate the pathological changes following brain ischemia at each pulmonary lobe.MethodsTransient middle cerebral artery occlusion (tMCAO) was applied as a model of cerebral ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury (CIRI). Neurological Severity Score (NSS) was assessed after 48 hours post‐injury and triphenyl tetrazolium chloride (TTC) staining was used to confirm the successful establishment of model. Histology and lung water content of each pulmonary lobe were conducted to evaluated the degree of lung injury.ResultsNSS assessment and TTC staining demonstrated the success of CIRI models in rats. In addition, anatomy revealed that pulmonary lobes were divided into five single lobes. The posterior lobe of right lung gained the lowest histopathologic score while the highest water content was observed in left single lobe.ConclusionTherefore, different pulmonary lobes may differ in the degree of lung injury induced by brain ischemia. This provides a novel and rigorous method for the study of lung injury.