Acute changes in regional brain water content following experimental closed head injury

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A Remington humane stunner was used to deliver blows to the skulls of anesthetized cats. The animals were sacrificed at 30 min or 1, 2 or 6 h after trauma and selected for data collection on the basis of the following 2 categories of gross intracranial pathology: unilateral contusion, with subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) or SAH only. For selected cats, specific gravity was measured in 5- to 10-mg samples of uncontused tissue taken from coronal slices at the level of the frontoparietal suture. The regions tested included dorsal cerebral cortex, subcortical white matter, deep white matter and caudate nucleus. Specific gravity data from injured animals were compared with those from similar areas in uninjured anesthetized cats to test for cerebral edema. At 30 min after head injury, contused hemispheres had significant edema of all areas tested except the caudate nucleus. Edema of the subcortical and deep white matter increased with time after the injury. Increase in water content of the cerebral cortex was transient and appeared unrelated to contusion. The caudate nucleus was edematous only at 6 h, suggesting movement of fluid from the deep white matter compartment into that nucleus. The hemispheres opposite the contusion and those related to SAH had, with 1 exception, an absence of edema in the white matter and caudate nucleus, but a transient increase in water content of the cerebral cortex. In the presence of contusion, cerebral edema probably can contribute to brain swelling as early as 30 min after closed head trauma. A transient and minimal cortical edema, perhaps related to ischemia, occurred in all groups of hemispheres examined.

This publication has 18 references indexed in Scilit: