The Evaluation Of The Role Of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy In Preventing The Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury Following Experimental Testicular Torsion

Testicular torsion is a urologic emergency where the injury is in form of ischemia-reperfusion and methods to lessen the morbidity should be used even after a successful detorsion procedure. In order to test the effect of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBO) treatment to reduce the testicular tissue damage and testicular function loss, we used rat testis models and compared the efficacy of a single session HBO treatment with repeated sessions. Young Sprague-Downey rats were used in this study and 4 experimental groups were instituted; 1) Sham: Testicles dissected, 2) Control: 720 degree torsion applied during 4 hours than detorsionned. 3) HBO-1: 4 hour torsion than one session HBO, and 4) HBO-7: 4-hour torsion than 7 sessions HBO. All testicles were removed one week later and germinal changes were evaluated. HBO treatment groups showed significantly high maturation rates when compared to the control group (p<0,05). Germinal epithelial necrosis was seen in all the rats of the control group. The rate of germinal epithelial necrosis was 1/9 in HBO-1 group and 6/9 in HBO-7 group. A decrease in the number of multinuclear bizarre cells and apoptotic cells was found significant only in HBO-1 group. HBO treatment was not found to have affected the number of seminiferous tubules having germinal cells with nuclear vacuolization. Although HBO treatment was found effective in preventing the damage from ischemia-reperfusion injury in rat testis; no significant difference was noted between a single and multiple sessions of HBO treatment.