Abstract
Discussion And Conclusions
Myocardial damage can be produced in the dog heart by daily intravenous injections of lanatoside C in doses greater than 0.20 cat unit per kilo of body weight. There may be subendocardial hemorrhage in animals dying after such injections, but the coronary vessels are entirely free of any gross or microscopic abnormalities. These changes probably result from spasm with local lumen attenuation of the coronary vessels supplying the involved areas. Lanatoside C in large doses probably reduces the blood supply of the heart muscle by a powerful vasoconstrictor action on the coronary arteries. Essex and Visscher 2 have shown that lanatoside C in therapeutic doses does not restrict the coronary flow as measured by the thermostromuhr.
The myocardial damage which we produced in our experiments is probably not clinically significant, since daily doses approaching the level needed to produce these changes are never given.‡ The importance of producing myocardial infarction without grossly changing or plugging the coronary arteries is, however, emphasized by this study.
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