Dynamic sympathetic regulation of left ventricular contractility studied in the isolated canine heart.

We investigated the dynamic sympathetic regulation of left ventricular end-systolic elastance ( E es) using an isolated canine ventricular preparation with functioning sympathetic nerves intact. We estimated the transfer function from both stellate ganglion stimulation to E es and ganglion stimulation to heart rate (HR) for both left and right ganglia by means of the white noise approach and transformed those transfer functions into corresponding step responses. The HR response was much larger with right sympathetic stimulation than with left sympathetic stimulation (4.3 ± 1.4 vs. 0.7 ± 0.6 beats ⋅ min-1 ⋅ Hz-1, P < 0.01). In contrast, the E es responses without pacing were not significantly different between left and right sympathetic stimulation (0.72 ± 0.34 vs. 0.76 ± 0.42 mmHg ⋅ ml-1 ⋅ Hz-1). Fixed-rate pacing significantly decreased the E es response to right sympathetic stimulation (0.53 ± 0.43 mmHg ⋅ ml-1 ⋅ Hz-1, P < 0.01), but not to left sympathetic stimulation (0.67 ± 0.32 mmHg ⋅ ml-1 ⋅ Hz-1, not significant). Although the mechanism by which the sympathetic nervous system regulates cardiac contractility is different depending on whether the left or right sympathetic nerves are activated, this difference does not affect the apparent response of E es to dynamic sympathetic stimulation.