Table 11 Summary of Neurological and Behavior Tests After Experimental SAH
From: Neurological and neurobehavioral assessment of experimental subarachnoid hemorrhage
Test | Advantages | Disadvantages | Differentiates Sham from SAH | Detects Treatment Effects |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Mortality | Quantitative, easy to measure | Treatments in humans save some patients whereas animals die and these may be the most likely to have neurological and neurobehavior deficits | Significantly different for endovascular SAH in mice and rats, injection model in rabbits, not in dogs | Decreased mortality after endovascular SAH with some treatments in rats, not reported in other species |
Body weight | Quantitative, easy to measure | May not be very sensitive to effects of SAH | Transiently decreased after SAH in rats and endovascular SAH in mice, not described in dogs | Less weight loss after endovascular SAH with some treatments in rats, not described in dogs |
Neurological Function | May detect delayed cerebral ischemia that is an important clinical event, widely used in other types of brain injuries | Often qualitative, focal motor, sensory and reflex alterations are not common after clinical or experimental SAH | Several scales detect differences after endovascular SAH in rats, mice and rabbits {Katz1995}{Garcia1995}{Parra2002}, rotarod may detect differences after double hemorrhage SAH in rats and sinble hemorrhage SAH in rats may produce differences in beam balance and beam walking. Not assessed in dogs | Several scales detect treatment effects after endovascular SAH in rats and mice {Garcia1995}{Feldman1996}{Parra2002}. Beam balance and beam walking may improve with treatments after single SAH in rats within first days. Appetite and activity may be improved by treatments after double SAH in dogs, neurological deficits almost never observed |
Neurobehavior tests | Executive function, memory, learning, attention are commonly affected after clinical SAH, tests can be selected to assess very specific neurobehaviors or discrete brain regions of interest | More complicated and expensive to use, since they have not been used much in SAH the sensitivity and specificity are unknown, may require lack of impairment in neurological function to perform | Impaired learning and memory after double injection or endovascular SAH in rats, not assessed in any other models | Not assessed |