Objectives: 

Isolated perfused kidney is one of the most widely used methods in renal research. In this study, we test a new surgical procedure to isolate both kidneys for their utilization as a vascular preparation.

Materials: 

The abdomen was opened. The left renal and abdominal aorta arteries were exposed, cleaned and dissected. Loose ligatures were placed around the proximal aorta and renal arteries, and three ligatures were placed around the mesenteric artery. A 18-gauge needle was inserted into the superior mesenteric artery and passed it across the aorta into the renal artery, where it was tied in place. Perfusion was initiated and the kidney was excised from its surrounding tissues and removed. After removal of the right kidney, the aorta was cannulated with a 18-gauge needle. Perfusion was initiated and the needle was advanced into the left renal artery. The needle was secured with the liga¬ture. The entire surgical procedure was completed in <15 min by a single operator, minimizing the time between right kidney removal and the start of left kidney perfusion. The resulting preparations were compared with kidneys obtained by the classical method, analyzing the responsiveness to the vasoconstrictor phenylephrine and to the endothelium-dependent vasodilator acetylcholine. Vascular reactivity was evaluated under normal conditions and in endothelium-denuded preparations.

Results: 

The dose-response curves to phenylephrine and to acetylcholine were similar in the three experimental groups, regardless of the procedure used for kidney isolation, in both endothelium-intact and endothelium-denuded preparations.

Conclusions: 

This surgical procedure reduces the number of animals required by half reducing the cost of the experiments. It is of special interest to test the action mechanisms of new vasoactive drugs. It could also be used in chronic studies when different experimental protocols are performed on the left and right kidneys and to improve the accuracy of the results by analyzing cases in duplicate.