Experimental Models of Acute Lung Injury: their Advantages and Limitations

Acute damage to the lung may originate from various direct and indirect reasons. Direct lung injury may be caused by pneumonia, near-drowning, aspiration, inhalation of toxic gases etc., while indirect lung injury is secondary, following any severe extra-pulmonary disease, e.g. sepsis, acute pancreatitis, or severe trauma. Due to a complex pathophysiology of the acute lung injury, the treatment is also extremely complicated and except for lung-protective ventilation there have been no specific treatment approaches recommended. An urgent need for a reliable and sufficiently effective treatment forces the researchers into testing novel therapeutic strategies. However, most of these determinations should be done in the laboratory conditions using animals. Complex methods of preparation of various experimental models of the acute lung injury has gradually developed within decades. Nowadays, there have been the models of direct, indirect, or mixed lung injury well established, as well as the models evoked by a combination of two triggering factors. Although the applicability of the results from animal experiments to patients might be limited by many factors, animal models are essential for understanding the patho-physiology of acute lung injury and provide an exceptional opportunity to search for novel therapeutical strategies.