A scanning electron microscopic method for assessing surface topography of bladders

Abstract

Neither light microscopy nor transmission electron microscopy lend themselves to an accurate assessment of focal changes of epithelium: both techniques are limited by sampling procedures. The same limitation, however, does not apply to scanning electron microscopy (SEM) (1,2) which permits statistically meaningful analyses on a larger number of samples. The usefulness of such an approach was explored in our studies on the induction of damage to rat urothelium by cyclophosphamide (3,4) and its prevention by adjunct therapy with 2,3-dimercaptopropane sulfonate (DMPS). Portions of the bladder were sampled from the dome, central region and trigone and the tissue was prepared for SEM by dehydration in acetone, followed by critical point drying and gold coating. SEM analyses were performed in a two-step procedure using a Novascan scanning electron microscope at low (20X) and high (100X) magnifications.