Global cerebral ischemia and subsequent selective hypothermia. A neuropathological and morphometrical study on...

A new method of external selective brain cooling is described, showing its effectiveness in reducing neuronal damage following global cerebral ischemia in cat. The cooling apparatus consists of a specially fitted kind of water jacket in which the animal's head was laid. In a preliminary study it was verified that the device effectively reduces brain temperature without the risk of cardiac arrhythmias due to lowering of core temperature. In the main study cardiac arrest was induced in 23 adult cats, followed after 15 min by cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Eight cats could not be revived; of the 15 remaining animals, 7 were assigned to the control group (normothermia) and 8 to the treatment group (cerebral hypothermia). The latter received external brain cooling for 30 min, starting as soon as CPR was begun. Four hours after cardiac arrest all animals were transcardiacally perfused with glutardialdehyde. The brains were stored in fixative and subsequently processed for histopathological and morphometrical evaluation by light microscopy. Analysis of the resulting data showed that animals in the treatment group had a significantly higher percentage of undamaged neurons than animals in the control group, both in the cingulate gyrus (38% vs 10%) and in the parietal cortex (39% vs 14%). The treatment group also had more undamaged neurons in the hippocampus and fewer severely damaged neurons in all three regions, but these differences, though suggestive, were not statistically significant.