Effect of lidocaine on forebrain ischemia in rats.

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Abstract
We examined the effect of lidocaine on ischemic neuronal injury in the rat forebrain ischemia model. Cerebral ischemia was achieved with bilateral carotid artery occlusion and controlled hypotension to a mean of 50 torr for 10 minutes. Perfusion-fixation was performed 7 days after ischemia, subsequent to which the brains were sectioned coronally and stained with hematoxylin and eosin. Ischemic neuronal injury was quantitatively expressed (after direct counting) as a percentage of total neurons, that is, ischemic neurons divided by (ischemic neurons + normal neurons). Predictably, the selectively vulnerable hippocampal areas exhibited the most marked neuronal injury. In the CA1/CA2 sectors, lidocaine-treated rats demonstrated less injury (34 +/- 14%) than untreated (64 +/- 9%) or saline-treated (70 +/- 10%) rats. However, these superficially pronounced numerical differences were not of statistical significance (p greater than 0.05). In the CA3 sector, neuronal injury in lidocaine-treated rats (31 +/- 14%) was significantly different at p less than 0.05 from the untreated (80 +/- 5%) but not the saline-treated (59 +/- 13%) group. We conclude that lidocaine may have an only marginal beneficial effect on forebrain ischemia in rats.