A new apparatus for standardized rat kidney biopsy.

Survival biopsies are frequently applied in rat kidney disease models, but several drawbacks such as surgical kidney trauma, bleeding risk and variable loss of kidney tissue are still unsolved. Therefore, we developed an easy-to-use core biopsy instrument and evaluated whether two consecutive kidney biopsies within the same kidney can be carried out in a standardized manner. On day 0, 18 Lewis rats underwent a right nephrectomy and 9 of these rats a subsequent first biopsy of the left kidney (Bx group).