Effect of sevoflurane preconditioning on ischaemia/reperfusion injury in the rat kidney in vivo.

Background And Objective: Whereas the protective effect of anaesthetic and ischaemic preconditioning has been described for several organs, it is uncertain whether this mechanism is also effective in the kidney. We compared the effect of preconditioning with sevoflurane and preconditioning with short episodes of ischaemia on renal ischaemia/reperfusion injury in the rat in vivo.

Methods: Fourteen days after right-sided nephrectomy, anaesthetized male Wistar rats were randomly assigned to a sham-operated group (no arterial occlusion, n = 5) or underwent 45 min of left renal artery occlusion (control group, n = 9) followed by 3 days of reperfusion. Two further experimental groups of animals were preconditioned prior to ischaemia either by administering 1 MAC sevoflurane for 15 min followed by 10 min of washout (sevoflurane group, n = 10) or by subjecting the animals to three short episodes of renal ischaemia (ischaemia-preconditioned group, n = 8). Blood creatinine was measured during reperfusion and morphological damage was assessed by histological examination.

Results: Baseline creatinine values were similar in all four groups (0.7 +/- 0.2 mg dL-1; mean +/- SD) and remained unchanged in the sham-operated animals after 3 days (0.8 +/- 0.2 mg dL-1). Creatinine levels increased in the ischaemic preconditioning group (3.3 +/- 1.2 mg dL-1) and sevoflurane preconditioning group (4.0 +/- 1.1 mg dL-1) compared to the control group (1.6 +/- 0.6 mg dL-1). Morphological damage was less severe in the control group, i.e. in animals without preconditioning, than in both preconditioning groups.

Conclusion: Neither sevoflurane nor ischaemic preconditioning preserves renal function or attenuates cell damage in the rat in vivo.