Journal of Applied Physiology, Vol 59, Issue 1 266-268, Copyright © 1985 by American Physiological Society
A technique for unilateral instillation of agents into the rat lung
B. A. Dubaybo and L. A. Thet
We describe a technique for unilateral instillation of agents into the
right lung of rats. We intubated rats perorally with a 16-gauge flexible
polyethylene catheter and through it introduced narrow-bore (less than 1 mm
diam) polyethylene tubing into the trachea and beyond the carina into the
right main-stem bronchus. This maneuver was facilitated by placing the
animal supine with the cephalad end tilted up and the right side tilted
down. We tested the effectiveness of our technique by instilling Evans blue
dye into the right lung of 14 rats and spectrophotometrically quantitating
the amount of dye present in homogenates from each lobe of the right and
left lungs. Ninety-seven percent of the instilled dye was recovered from
the right lung, and distribution of dye per gram of tissue was uniform
among the four lobes. The technique described should be useful in producing
severe degrees of unilateral lung injury and fibrosis in rodents without
the high mortality that can be associated with bilateral lung injury.
