Abstract
Variations in susceptibility to acute oxygen toxicity were observed among animals from the same colony as well as between two different colonies of Sprague-Dawley rats. Animals from Colony I survived, on the average, 6.7 days in 100 per cent oxygen, while the Colony II rats were considerably more susceptible to 100 per cent oxygen and survived, on the average, only 2.5 days. The survival of individual Colony I rats ranged from three to 20 days, Colony II rats from two to three days. Because others have described the general lung injuries caused by oxygen as similar in man and rat, one should consider the possibility that some individual human patients may also be excessively sensitive to relatively brief exposures to 100 per cent oxygen.
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