ABSTRACT
Acute alveolar injury is a type of injury to the lung with many causes or antecedent events. Larger doses led to more rapid onset of respiratory failure and to more florid lung injury, often with hyaline membranes. The injury induced in the lung by nitrosourethane closely resembles acute alveolar injury in the human. For morphologic studies, the animals are killed with intravenous pentobarbital at various intervals following injection of nitrosourethane and the lungs quickly excised, weighed, and inflated through a tracheal cannula with cold 3" gluteraldehyde buffered with phosphate to pH 7.4. Physiologic Studies are categorizes to three types, anesthetic procedures, mechanical ventilation and lung mechanics. The reduced isopycnic density, decreased protein content, and abnormal surface function of the surfactant from nitrosourethane-injured lungs may result from active metabolism of surfactant in the alveoli or from synthesis by regenerating type II cells of abnormal lipids and proteins.
