Hind limbs of dogs were frozen with solid CO2 and one leg was thawed at 42°C. for comparison with the other thawed at 20 to 120 C. One frostbitten ear of rabbits was thawed at 380 C. and the other at 2°C. In neither case was any essential difference reported between the rapidly and slowly thawed extremities, although the frostbitten legs were observed only for 18 hours. They reported that "if anything, the ears that were thawed in ice water showed a trace more gangrene."Ariev (1) has reported the results of several series of experiments which were designed to compare the effect of slow and rapid warming of frozen ears and feet of rabbits. After freezing both ears of rabbits with ethyl chloride, one ear was warmed with hot compresses wet in water at 400 to 450 C. The frostbitten part of the slowlywarmed ear was ultimately lost in 5 animals while the rapidly-warmed ear showed only fibrosis in the distal part. Both feet of rabbits were frozen with ethyl chloride to the tibio-tarsal joint. One foot was then rapidly thawed by means of the application of compresses wet with water at 350 to 400 C. while the other was thawed in air. In the rapidly warmed foot, gangrene "only touched the most distal parts of the toes," while in the opposite foot "total gangrene spread over the entire region subjected to freezing."The experiments reported here were carried out in order to determine the effectiveness of immediate rapid warming in preventing the occurrence of gangrene following controlled cold injury. The effect of rapid warming on local blood flow in frostbitten ears and feet following thawing f has been examined by means of fluorescein and by s measurement of skin temperature.
METHODS aThe method used for the production of controlled cold injury has been described previously (6). In this series of experiments, rabbit ears were immersed at -550 C. for 1, 112 or 2 minutes; rabbit feet were immersed at -55' 476
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