Although the pressure-rate product (double product; DP) is generally recognized as a good index of myocardial oxygen consumption (V02), catecholamines are reported to change the V02-DP relationship. However, the separate influences of chronotropism and inotropism on the V02-DP relation have not been studied. Therefore, we examined these influences in anesthetized open-chest dogs by cardiac pacing and dobutamine infusion. We observed two different V02-DP lines under the separate chronotropic and inotropic changes. We interpreted such V02-DP relations by the concept of the pressure-volume area (PVA). PVA is a measure of total mechanical energy for ventricular contraction and is a specific area in the ventricular pressure-volume (P-V) diagram circumscribed by the end-systolic and end-diastolic P-V relation curves and the systolic segment of the P-V trajectory. The empirical V02-PVA relation that had been obtained in our previous studies reasonably simulated the dissociation of DP from Vo2 under separate changes in chronotropism and inotropism.Key words ; myocardial energetics, determinant of oxygen consumption, double product, pressure-volume area.Since the pressure-rate product (double product; DP) was proposed as a good index for the oxygen cost of mechanical activity in canine heart (GEROLA et al., 1957;KATZ and FEINBERG, 1958), many investigators have reported reasonably good correlations (approximately r = 0.8) between DP and myocardial oxygen consumption (Vo2) under broad conditions of hemodynamics (BALLER et al., 1981; ROOKE and FEIGL, 1982). Both in the normal and ischemic human hearts, DP also highly correlates with Vo2 under atrial pacing and exercise