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Updated: Apr 21, 2026
Quantitative Assessment of Immune Cells in the Injured Spinal Cord Tissue by Flow Cytometry: a Novel Use for a Cell Purification Method
Published on: April 9, 2011
Assessing the immune status of critically ill trauma patients by flow cytometry
Joshua W Kuethe1, Rachael Mintz-Cole, Bobby L Johnson
1Joshua W. Kuethe, MD, is General Surgery Resident; Rachael Mintz-Cole, PhD, is MD Candidate; Bobby L. Johnson III, MD, is General Surgery Resident; and Emily F. Midura, MD, is General Surgery Resident, College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati, Ohio. Charles C. Caldwell, PhD, is Associate Professor, College of Medicine, Department of Surgery, Division of Research, University of Cincinnati, Ohio. Barbara St. Pierre Schneider, DNSc, RN, is Associate Professor, School of Nursing, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Insights
Flow cytometry can monitor the immune status of critically ill trauma patients. This method aids in understanding immune responses and guiding treatment decisions for severe injuries.
Area of Science:
- Immunology
- Critical Care Medicine
- Biotechnology
Background:
- Unintentional injury is a leading cause of death in young adults, with many requiring intensive care.
- Critically ill trauma patients face high risks of nosocomial infections, sepsis, and multiple organ failure.
- Immune response balance is crucial in trauma progression, but timely immune status detection is lacking.
Purpose of the Study:
- To demonstrate flow cytometry's suitability for monitoring immune status in critically ill trauma patients.
- To highlight flow cytometry's potential in advancing nursing research in critical care.
Main Methods:
- A literature review was conducted to gather information on flow cytometry applications.
- The review focused on flow cytometry's capabilities in characterizing leukocyte subtypes, activation markers, cytokines, microvesicles, and function.
Main Results:
- Flow cytometry can characterize and enumerate various leukocyte parameters.
- The technique is well-suited for assessing immune status in critically ill trauma patients.
Conclusions:
- Flow cytometry is a valuable research tool for nurse scientists studying critically ill patients.
- It can aid in investigating immune status, recovery from conditions like hemorrhagic shock, and the cancer-disease relationship.
- This technology can expand nursing research into cellular responses for a comprehensive understanding.
Background:
Unintentional injury or trauma remains the leading cause of death among young adults. About one fifth of these trauma patients require care in an intensive care unit (ICU) because of severity of injuries and comorbidities. Patients hospitalized in an ICU are at increased risk for nosocomial infections, such as urinary tract infections, pneumonia, bacteremia, and wound infections. Many of these patients will develop sepsis or septic shock, and some will progress to multiple organ failure and death. The balance between the proinflammatory and counterinflammatory immune response appears to be a driving factor in this progression. At present, there is no proposed method for the timely detection of the immune status in trauma patients, making rational decisions to use immune-altering therapies difficult.
Objective:
We demonstrate that flow cytometry, with its capabilities to characterize and/or enumerate (a) leukocyte subtypes, (b) leukocyte activation markers, (c) leukocyte-derived cytokines and microvesicles, and (d) leukocyte function is well suited to monitor the immune status of critically ill trauma patients.
Methods:
Information for the review was obtained from the extant literature.
Discussion:
We suggest that flow cytometry is a research method that might aid nurse scientists in investigating the immune status of critically ill patients, the recovery status of conditions such as hemorrhagic shock and tissue injury and the relationship between cancer disease progression and symptoms. Therefore, flow cytometry has the potential to broaden nursing research priority areas so that a comprehensive approach to understanding the cellular response is attained.
