A Rat Model of Surgical Brain Injury

The rat model of surgical brain injury (SBI) mimics deleterious sequelae resulting from the unavoidable damage to healthy tissue during many neurosurgical procedures, such as peri-operative hemorrhage, brain edema, and neuroinflammation. The SBI model is ideal for evaluating pre-conditioning, pre-treatment, and peri-operative therapies. The SBI model is characterized by partial frontal lobe resection. First, a 5 × 5 mm cranial window in the right frontal bone is made to expose the underlying brain tissue. Next, partial resection of the frontal lobe is performed along margins of the bone window which is followed by saline irrigation and intraoperative packing to ensure complete hemostasis. The total time for completion of the SBI surgery in a rat is 30–40 min. The partial resection of frontal lobe results in contralateral sensorimotor deficits and anxiety-like behavior in rats. Neurological tests to evaluate anxiety-related behavior in SBI rats have been described in this chapter and are recommended for studies using the SBI rat model. The elevated plus maze test and open field test showed greater sensitivity than the forced swim test to detect anxiety-like behavior in rats after SBI. The rat model of SBI allows for investigation of therapeutics that target SBI-induced complications including intraoperative hemorrhage, post-operative hematoma, brain edema, blood brain barrier disruption, neuroinflammation, cell death and oxidative stress which are also briefly described in this chapter.