In mice, along with the assessment of eosinophils, lung function measurements, most commonly carried out by plethysmography, are essential to monitor the course of allergic airway inflammation, to examine therapy efficacy and to correlate animal with patient data. To date, plethysmography techniques either use intubation and/or restraining of the mice and are thus invasive, or are limited in th...

OBJECTIVE This study was undertaken to review the diagnostic ability of different quantification methods in the assessment of vibration-induced white finger (VWF), the typical clinical manifestation of vascular injuries in Hand-arm Vibration Syndrome (HAVS). METHODS A literature search of original and major review articles related to the quantification techniques for diagnosing vascular injur...

Methods of indirectly determining blood pressure in the rat are reviewed and their drawbacks noted. A new method is described which has the advantage of objectivity and provides permanent graphic record of each determination. The end point used is the reappearance of pulsation in the foot distal to a slowly deflating leg cuff. Application of the method is described and its use compared with tai...

An attempt was made to analyze differences in the results obtained by various kinds of finger plethysmography, such as penetration photo-electric plethysmograph (penet.-PTG), reflexion photo-electric PTG (refl.-PTG), mechanoelectric PTG (pneumo-PTG and hydro-PTG) and impedance PTG, by taking simultaneous recordings principally from the same finger tip. Comparisons of the time course (onset time...

Given the environmental forcing by extremes in hypoxia-reoxygenation, there might be no genetic effect on posthypoxic short-term potentiation of ventilation. Minute ventilation (VE), respiratory frequency (f), tidal volume (VT), and the airway resistance during chemical loading were assessed in unanesthetized unrestrained C57BL/6J (B6) and A/J mice using whole body plethysmography. Static press...

We investigated the hypothesis that the diagnostic accuracy of impedance plethysmography (IPG) for thrombosis of the popliteal or more proximal veins increases with enhanced venous filling. Venous filling was increased by prolonging cuff occlusion and by sequential testing. IPG and vengography were performed on 169 legs with and 317 legs without proximal vein thrombosis. The sensitivity and spe...

The multibreath helium equilibration method is the technique recommended for routine measurement of static lung volumes in normal subjects. However, pregnancy could be an exception to this general rule, due to airway closure during the second half of gestation. The aim of this study was to compare the measurements of lung volumes by plethysmography and helium dilution during pregnancy. Twenty t...

A major symptom of hand-arm vibration syndrome is a secondary Raynaud's phenomenon-vibration white finger (VWF)-which results from a vasospasm of the digital arteries caused by work with vibration devices leading to occupational disease. Pharmacotherapy of VWF is often ineffective or has adverse effects. The aim of this work was to verify the influence of inhalation of partially ionized oxygen ...