The characteristics of brain injury following cerebral venous infarction induced by surgical interruption of the cortical bridging vein in mice

Abstract

Cerebral venous infarction (CVI) caused by the injury of cortical bridging veins (CBVs), is one of the most serious complications following neurosurgical craniotomy. Different from cerebral artery infarction, this CVI pathological process is more complicated, accompanied by acute venous hypertension, brain edema, cerebral ischemia and hemorrhage in the veins bridged brain area. Therefore, a reliable and stable small animal model is particularly important for the pathological study of CVI induced by surgical CBV interruption (CBVi). A mouse model established by cutting off the right CBVs from bregma to lambda with microsurgical technique is used for the assessment of the pathological process. Adult male mice underwent craniotomy after transection of the parietal skin under anesthesia. The right CBVs were exposed by removing the right skull along the right lateral edge of the sagittal sinus (forming a 4 mm × 3 mm bone window from bregma to lambda) with a drill under the operating microscope. Following the final inspection of the cerebral veins, the CBVs (30% one, 60% two, 10% none) were sacrificed using bipolar coagulation technique. Intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring, motor function examination, brain edema assessment and brain histopathological observation after perfusion were performed at different time points (6 h, 12 h, 24 h, and 48 h) in the postoperative mice. Cerebral hemisphere swelling, midline shift and subcortical petechial hemorrhage were found on histological sections 6 h after CBVs dissection. The change of ICP was consistent with cerebral edema and peaked at 12 h after surgery, as well as the disruption of the blood–brain barrier assessed by Evans Blue staining. Tissue necrosis, nerve cell loss and monocytes infiltration were also dynamically increased in the postoperative hemispheric cortex. Behavioral tests showed obvious somato- and forelimb-motor dysfunction, and severe somatosensory disorder on the operative mice at 12 h, which were substantially recovered at 48 h. Our study provided a novel mouse model of CVI caused by surgical CBVi that was close to clinical practice, and preliminarily confirmed its pathological process. This model might become an important tool to study the clinical pathology and the molecular mechanism of nerve injury following CVI.