Summary
Cardiac I/R surgery in the mouse is an increasingly important model of human disease but remains technically challenging in terms of both surgery and histological analysis. To minimize experimental noise and reduce group sizes, infarct measurements should be performed on high-quality tissue samples. For this report we have scrutinized each step involved in double-staining histology. We have tested published approaches and challenged their practicality, validity, and reproducibility. As a result, we propose the described streamlined protocol, which consistently yields high-quality histology and should be helpful for other laboratories planning in vivo I/R experiments.