Studies on the Effects of Hyperbaric Oxygenation on the Opsonic Index and Haematological Blood Image in Rabbits

Abstract

Hyperbaric oxygen toxicity studies were conducted on rabbits using the opsonic index determination.The study was conducted on 15 animals that had opsonin index examined prior to hyperbaric oxygen exposure. They were then subjected to an hourly exposure to hyperbaric oxygen with overpressure values of 1.8, 2.4 and 3.1 atm in groups of 5 animals. After the exposure, the opsonium index was re-examined upon the lapse of 1, 2 and 10 days. Parallelly, the morphological image of the blood was examined.There was a statistically significant increase in the index in the first two days after exposure, independent of the value of oxygen overpressure. On the 10th day, the index value approached the initial one.

Analysis of Species Characteristics of Laboratory Animals in Reaction to Hyperbaric Environmental Conditions

“…For these animals, it was impossible to significantly exceed the critical pressure value due to the non-negative effects of high partial pressure of oxygen, nitrogen and high density of the breathing mixture. The animals would be exposed to central oxygen poisoning, nitrogen anaesthesia and hypercapnia, which would not be without impact on the results of the studies [2][3][4]7,8,10,18,19,21,[22][23][24]27,30,35,38,39,41].…”

“…Previous reports on nitrogen release from the human body and large experimental animals were based on the determination of the rate of excretion following administration of oxygen or a gas mixture containing no nitrogen [1,5,7,10,14,[17][18][19]22,24,26,29,30,31,40]. Due to the inert gas distribution process in the system, this method cannot be used for small animals.…”

“…In most cases, researchers used one, very rarely several species of animals and did not aim at analysing species properties in the reaction of the system to conditions of overpressure. One of the most frequently used species in hyperbaric studies is the rabbit [6,18,24,25,27,28,37,39], or guinea pig [3,6,7,35], whereas rats [1, 2,[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]19,29,30,33,34,35,38,39,41,42] were the most frequently studied species [1,2,[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]19,29,30,33,34,…”

“…On the basis of the review of the studies, it can be concluded that the sensitivity of the animal species concerned was similar as regards toxic effects of oxygen [5,7,8,10,14,18,19,19,21,36), narcotic effects of inert gases [2][3][4]23,24,31,40], sensitivity to density of the breathing mixture and CO2 concentration [28], while there were significant differences in the susceptibility of each animal species to decompression sickness owing to variations in their body's ability to remove gas.…”

“…In the description of the symptoms of pressure disease in animals, the nomenclature adopted in the evaluation of decompression cases in humans [16][17][18][19][20] was used. The most frequently induced type of acute form of decompression sickness was characterised by neurological symptoms and pulmonary form with acute circulatory and respiratory insufficiency.…”