The use of intravital microscopy in surgical research

Abstract

Recent developments in intravital microscopy make this technique an attractive approach to studying microvascular, cellular, and molecular mechanisms of distinct surgical diseases. We investigated the value of this technique in surgical research laboratories by analyzing the studies presented during the past 26 years (1972–1997) at the Surgical Forum of the Annual Congress of the German Society of Surgery. From a total of 2279 papers 188 contributions (8.3%) presented data which derived from the analysis of the microcirculation using techniques, such as H₂ and ¹³³Xe clearance, autoradiography, thermodiffusion, laser Doppler fluxmetry, laser speckle, radioactive and fluorescent microspheres, polarographic oximetry, and intravital microscopy. There were 72 presentations (3.2% of all contributions) reporting the use of intravital microscopy, thus reflecting 38.3% of all microcirculatory analyses. Although these numbers may be considered quite small, analysis over time revealed a significant (P<0.05) increase in the number of microcirculatory studies (11.4%) and in particular of those using intravital microscopy (6.3%) in the 1990s when compared to the 1970s (5.3%; 0.1%) and 80th (7.1%; 1.3%). In 1997, 27 of 165 contributions (16.4%) included microcirculatory analyses, and 18 of the 165 contributions (10.9%) reported results analyzed by intravital microscopy. Thus our analysis reflects an increasing interest of surgical researchers to study in vivo the microcirculation, and by doing so to use intravital microscopy for the elucidation of mechanisms of surgical disease.