The aim of this study is to investigate the protective effects of regional hypothermia (RH) on rabbits’ limbs injured by a steel-ball combined with hemorrhagic-shock, and then employed tourniquet over-time, tried to identify the optimal treatment RH.

Transient RH (4 h) had a “long-term mitigation effects” (continued for 6 h) on time-out application of tourniquet with the fluid resuscitation and core temperature maintenance, and the most effective temperature for reducing the side effects on tourniquet time-out application was 10°C.

Following with RH treatment, the injury of lung and local muscle tissue was alleviated evidencing by mitigation of histopathological changes, significant decrease of water-content and MDA content, and increase of ATPase activity.

30 rabbits were randomly divided into 5 groups. All rabbits were anesthetized, intubated femoral artery and vein in right-hind limbs.

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