Studies in Renal Denervation. III. Bacterial Embolism in the Normal and Denervated Kidney

Abstract

Medium sized rabbits were used throughout the experiment. The left kidney was denervated and the right kidney was left intact and used as a control. The rabbits were placed on normal diet. The kidney was approached through a lumbar incision and denervated according to the method described by Milles, Muller and Petersen, except that the animals were placed under ether anesthesia instead of Nembutal. Some of the animals were allowed to recover for 2 weeks; others for 2 months. Five cc. of a concentrated suspension of an attenuated culture of Staphylococcus aureus in physiological salt solution was injected into the marginal ear vein of each rabbit. The fine clumps of bacterial growth were not broken up when removed from the agar plates and placed into the salt solution, in the hope that embolus formation would thus be favored. This was first tried on unoperated animals to determine the dosage necessary to produce emboli. It had been previously determined that this dosage would kill such rabbits in 4 to 5 days. It was then tried on denervated rabbits and the results indicated that the denervated kidneys contained about half as many emboli as the intact kidney. The following rabbits were then used to make exact counts of the number of micotic abscesses formed. They were killed on the morning of the fourth day after the bacterial injection by injecting ether into the heart, the kidneys removed and fixed in formalin. Corresponding parts of the kidneys were sectioned serially and examined microscopically. The emboli were counted and the following results were obtained: