Acute Cerebral Infarction and Hypotension: An Ultrastructural Study

A comparison was made of morphological changes in brain tissue following periods of hypotension plus ischemia (due to occlusion of the middle cerebral artery) with those changes resulting from ischemia alone. It was found that a greater degree of swelling was present in the brains of those animals subjected to hypotension and ischemia than in those with vascular occlusion only. The type of organellular response in the hypotensive/ischemic animals was one of vacuolar formation within mitochondrial, endoplasmic reticular, and Golgi elements. It is concluded that the compound effects of hypotension plus ischemia result in more widespread and complex morphological response than either hypotension or ischemia alone. These morphological findings offer supportive data which will be further correlated with a future report on comparable changes in cerebral metabolism and hemodynamics.