Cardiovascular Response After Cardiac Autotransplant in Primate

Abstract

TRANSPLANTATION RANSPLANTATION of the heart results in complete cardiac denervation which has been shown to cause significant chemical,¹ histological,^2,3 metabolic,⁴ and functional⁵ changes in the dog. In anticipation of cardiac homotransplantation in man, we have studied the effects of cardiac denervation in another primate. This presentation details the studies in nine normal baboons as controls and in six baboons with autotransplanted hearts and three with hearts completely separated from extrinsic neural connections. Methods Autotransplantation by the technique described in the dog⁶ was performed in ten baboons. Six animals surviving longer than one month were available for study along with three animals more than one month after total mediastinal neural ablation.⁷ Nine animals were taken at random as normal controls from a large baboon colony. In all 18 animals, cardiac output (CO) was determined by dye dilution technique with indocyanine green (Cardiogreen) injection into a