Oral endotracheal intubation of rats for intratracheal instillation and aerosol drug delivery.

As reported in the literature, oral endotracheal intubation of rats is considered to be very difficult. Specialised equipment and complicated techniques have been described to perform this procedure. In our experiment we adopted a simple method, which allowed-without any complicated equipment-the insertion of a relatively wide tube into the trachea of rats, allowing drug administration.