Animal Models: Global Ischemia

Introduction

Global cerebral ischemia (GCI) is a major factor in the high mortality following cardiac arrest, which causes around 300,000 fatalities per year in the United States. Among the survivors, most have lifelong cognitive deficits. To model GCI in animals, a number of global ischemia models were established in the 1970s. An initial focus lay on large animals, such as cats, dogs, and monkeys. With increasing costs and regulatory difficulties for large animal studies, currently rodent models of GCI are more common. Especially mice are used frequently, because of the availability of genetic knockouts. To reflect the clinical situation more closely, models of cardiac arrest with cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CA/CPR) have also been established, which will only briefly be discussed here.