Lipoid and Hemorrhagic Changes in Adrenal Cortex Following Traumatic Shock.

Abstract

It has been shown that if profound and fatal shock is to be obtained in the intact dog by traumatization, the severity of tissue injury must be very much greater than is required to induce shock symptoms in the equally healthy and vigorous animal lacking adrenal glands.1 Evidence is presented indicating that the extreme susceptibility of the adrenalectomized dog to shock following trauma is largely due to the absence of one of the mechanisms concerned with the maintenance of normal blood volume, namely, the adrenal cortex. Data are presented here which show that the adrenal cortex of intact dogs dying from traumatic shock presents histological evidence of considerable impairment.The lipoid studies were made on frozen sections of the adrenals variously stained with 2% osmic acid, Scharlach R, and Sudan III. For the study of adrenal cortical hemorrhages and other histological details, paraffin sections were stained with iron hematoxylin and eosin.The dogs in both the normal and experimental groups were rigo...