School of Biological Sciences, Illinois State University, Normal, IL 61790-4120, USA.
Vet Pathol. 2012 Mar;49(2):362-71. doi: 10.1177/0300985812436745. Epub 2012 Jan 30.
Migrating bats have increased mortality near moving turbine blades at wind farms. The authors evaluated competing hypotheses of barotrauma and traumatic injury to determine the cause. They first examined the utility of lungs from salvaged bat carcasses for histopathologic diagnosis of barotrauma and studied laboratory mice as a model system. Postmortem time, environmental temperature, and freezing of carcasses all affected the development of vascular congestion, hemorrhage, and edema. These common tissue artifacts mimicked the diagnostic criteria of pulmonary barotrauma; therefore, lung tissues from salvaged bats should not be used for barotrauma diagnosis. The authors next compared wind farm (WF) bats to building collision (BC) bats collected near downtown Chicago buildings. WF bats had an increased incidence in fracture cases and specific bone fractures and had more external lacerations than BC bats. WF bats had additional features of traumatic injury, including diaphragmatic hernia, subcutaneous hemorrhage, and bone marrow emboli. In summary, 73% (190 of 262) of WF bats had lesions consistent with traumatic injury. The authors then examined for ruptured tympana, a sensitive marker of barotrauma in humans. BC bats had only 1 case (2%, 1 of 42), but this was attributed to concurrent cranial fractures, whereas WF bats had a 20% (16 of 81) incidence. When cases with concurrent traumatic injury were excluded, this yielded a small fraction (6%, 5 of 81) of WF bats with lesions possibly consistent with barotrauma etiology. Forensic pathology examination of the data strongly suggests that traumatic injury is the major cause of bat mortality at wind farms and, at best, barotrauma is a minor etiology.
迁徙蝙蝠在风力发电场移动的涡轮叶片附近死亡率增加。作者评估了气压伤和创伤性损伤的竞争假说，以确定病因。他们首先检查了从回收蝙蝠尸体中获取的肺组织用于气压伤的组织病理学诊断的效用，并研究了实验室小鼠作为模型系统。尸检时间、环境温度和尸体冷冻都会影响血管充血、出血和水肿的发展。这些常见的组织伪影模拟了肺气压伤的诊断标准；因此，不应使用回收蝙蝠的肺组织进行气压伤诊断。作者接下来比较了风力发电场（WF）蝙蝠和在芝加哥市建筑附近收集的建筑物碰撞（BC）蝙蝠。WF 蝙蝠骨折病例和特定骨折的发生率增加，与 BC 蝙蝠相比，外部撕裂伤更多。WF 蝙蝠还有其他创伤性损伤的特征，包括横膈疝、皮下出血和骨髓栓塞。总之，73%（262 例中的 190 例）WF 蝙蝠有与创伤性损伤一致的病变。作者随后检查了鼓膜破裂情况，这是气压伤在人类中的一个敏感标志物。BC 蝙蝠只有 1 例（2%，42 例中的 1 例），但这归因于同时发生的颅骨折，而 WF 蝙蝠的发生率为 20%（81 例中的 16 例）。当排除同时发生的创伤性损伤病例时，WF 蝙蝠中仅有一小部分（6%，81 例中的 5 例）的病变可能与气压伤病因一致。法医学检查数据强烈表明，创伤性损伤是风力发电场蝙蝠死亡的主要原因，气压伤充其量只是次要病因。
