Post-mortem inflation, radiography, and fixation of human lungs. A method for radiological and pathological correlations and morphometric studies.

A method is described for correlative radiological and pathological studies of the lung post mortem, including radiography after air inflation, fixation with formalin-polyethylene glycol-alcohol solution, air drying and systematic histological sampling of lung tissue. For morphometric studies the total lung capacity during life is determined from radiograms and compared with the volume of the excised lung after fixation. The method is simple, relatively inexpensive, and with some experience gives good results both in radiography and histology. With this method the test lungs seemed to assume during fixation a fairly constant volume, a little higher than functional residual capacity.