Effect of lidocaine on forebrain ischemia in rats.

We examined the effect of lidocaine on ischemic neuronal injury in the rat forebrain ischemia model. Cerebral ischemia was achieved with bilateral carotid artery occlusion and controlled hypotension to a mean of 50 torr for 10 minutes. Perfusion-fixation was performed 7 days after ischemia, subsequent to which the brains were sectioned coronally and stained with hematoxylin and eosin. Ischemic neuronal injury was quantitatively expressed (after direct counting) as a percentage of total neurons, that is, ischemic neurons divided by (ischemic neurons + normal neurons). Predictably, the selectively vulnerable hippocampal areas exhibited the most marked neuronal injury. In the CA1/CA2 sectors, lidocaine-treated rats demonstrated less injury (34 +/- 14%) than untreated (64 +/- 9%) or saline-treated (70 +/- 10%) rats. However, these superficially pronounced numerical differences were not of statistical significance (p greater than 0.05). In the CA3 sector, neuronal injury in lidocaine-treated rats (31 +/- 14%) was significantly different at p less than 0.05 from the untreated (80 +/- 5%) but not the saline-treated (59 +/- 13%) group. We conclude that lidocaine may have an only marginal beneficial effect on forebrain ischemia in rats.