The Effect of A Contusion Injury on Rabbit Skeletal Muscle: A Morphological Study

The paper describes the effects of two massage modalities on uninjured skeletal muscle morphology by the light microscopic evaluation of healthy vervet monkey and rabbit muscle. It remains unknown how treatments may influence the morphology of injured muscle during the process of healing. To determine this, the “drop mass” technique was employed to create a measurable injury to the left vastus lateralis muscle of five New Zealand white rabbits. Biopsies were obtained 6 days after injury from the juxta-bone and sub-dermal regions of the healing left and uninjured (control) right vastus lateralis of each animal. The tissue was fixed in formal saline, embedded in wax, cut, stained with haematoxylin and eosin and phosphotungstic acid haematoxylin and examined by light microscope. While the morphology of the muscle from both juxta-bone and sub-dermal biopsies remained abnormal 6 days after injury, a simple scoring system devised to describe the “severity” of residual morphological abnormality revealed juxta-bone tissue to be the most traumatised. The “drop-mass” technique appears to cause a contusion within a single muscle of at least two degrees of severity.