Laboratory-based, NIH-supported areas of inquiry in the Department of Anesthesia at Children's Hospital Boston include:
- experimental models of cardiopulmonary bypass in neonatal animals aimed at exploration of the role of white cell/endothelial adhesion molecules in the pathophysiology of extracorporeal circulation and ischemia/reperfusion injury.
- exploring the potential role of specific monoclonal antibodies in attenuating these types of injury in infants. Mice with genetic "knockouts" of genes coding for various adhesion molecules are produced at the medical school and tested in a variety of ischemia/reperfusion tissue damage models to explore the role of these genes.
- exploration of cell volume regulation in the brain and the role of cell volume disturbances in brain injury of various types.
Members of the Pain Treatment Services are actively investigating how tachyphylaxis to local anesthetic agents occurs, and how it is altered in the developing nervous system.
Other projects in the Pain Treatment Services laboratory include the development of local anesthetics that can provide prolonged analgesia for days or weeks following injection or implantation.
In other laboratory-based efforts, members of the department are pursuing questions related to lung transplantation and new modes of mechanical ventilation in several different animal models.
Go to Children's Anesthesiology Research site
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