Presenters: Aaron Boothby and Arman Ameripour
Mentor: Hans Dreyer
PM Poster Presentation
Poster 4
Orthopedic surgeons often utilize a tourniquet during surgical procedures to minimize blood loss and to maintain a clear surgical field. Current clinical dogma is that tourniquet use for up to two hours has no lasting negative impact on muscle tissue. However, our lab has recently shown that tourniquet use downregulates proteins regulating components of the cap-dependent translation initiation and elongation complex and upregulates proteins regulating catabolic pathways (MuRF1 and MAFbx) as well as stress activated protein kinases (SAPK/JNK). Tourniquet induced-anoxia reduces the rate of muscle cell metabolism. Studies have shown that the resultant ATP deficit leads to failure of the sodium potassium pump and subsequently to the building up of intracellular sodium and chloride ions. This change in ionic concentration causes water uptake and cell swelling. In this study, we used immunohistochemistry to analyze morpho- logical changes in muscle cells resulting from tourniquet-induced ischemia and subsequent reperfusion. We hypothesize that tourniquet use will result in muscle cell swelling. Preliminary data supports our hypothesis. Further research is needed to examine the role that cell swelling may play in post-surgical atrophy.