The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Vol 71, 526-532, Copyright © 1976 by The American Association for Thoracic Surgery and The Western Thoracic Surgical Association
Orthotopic canine heart transplantation: left ventricular contractility during chronic rejection
OC Penn, RW Brower, F Leicher, GT Meester and E Bos
Myocardial left ventricular contractility is assessed in 8 orthotopic
heart-transplanted dogs during chronic rejection by a noninvasive method.
The mean circumferential velocity of shortening (Vcf) is calculated from
endocardial marker motion on cinefilms. A model for chronic rejection after
cardiac transplantation was obtained by histocompatibility matching in DLA
identical Beagle littermates. No immunosuppressive treatment was used. All
dogs eventually died of chronic rejection; mean survival time was 112.5
days. LV contractility shows the following pattern: Chronic rejection
causes an important contractility decrease (P less than 0.001) with two
significant drops: (1) from the week preoperative to the first week after
transplantation (P less than 0.02) and (2) from week terminal minus one to
the terminal week (P less than 0.01). This study describes the technique
and the changes in Vcf observed over a period of time in a predictable
model.