INFLUENCE OF VARIOUS SOLUTIONS INJECTED INTO THE NASAL CAVITY ON NASAL EPITHELIUM
1987 Volume 90 Issue 12 Pages 1951-1962
Details
1987 Volume 90 Issue 12 Pages 1951-1962
Various solutions (saline, tap water, distilled water) with different osmolarities and with or without certain concentration of free residual chlorine were poured into the nasal cavities of 70 tracheostomized guinea pigs. The exposure durations were ranging from 5 minutes to 60 minutes. The septal mucosa was removed and observed under a light microscope and an electron microscope (H-600) with the accelerating voltage of 80KV.
Histological findings of the nasal epithelium obtained were as follows:
1) Physiological saline solution (286mos/l) did not cause any obvious morphological changes after 30 minutes' exposure, whereas tap water (9mos/l) and distilled water (0mos/l) caused dominant morphological changes even after 5 minutes' exposure.
2) Thirty or 60 minutes' exposures against tap water caused exfoliation of the damaged epithelium from the basal lamina.
3) Free residual chlorine at the concentration 1ppm caused no histological damages in the nasal epithelium, whereas concentrations of 50 or 100ppm brought chemical damages in the epithelial cells.
4) Fifteen minutes' exposures against water with 1ppm free residual chlorine gave reversible minor changes in the nasal epithelium which returned to normal findings within 4 hours. Thirty minutes' exposures to water with 50ppm free residual chlorine, on the other hand, showed remarkable degenerations of the epithelial cells, most of which exfoliated from the basal lamina. Even in the severely damaged epithelium, intact basal cells remained within normal structure and some of them began to show the new cellular arrangement.
According to the present experiments, it was concluded that the osmotic pressure of the injected solutions seemed to be critical to maintain the static environments for the nasal epithelium. And it was also clearly demonstrated that duration of water-exposure to the nasal mucosa is one of the most important factors to determine the degree of the epithelial damage and its reversibility.
