The Effects of Stellate Ganglionectomy on the Distribution, Uptake and Storage of Noradrenaline in the Dog Heart

Abstract

It has been shown that the heart of the mammals contains relatively large amount of catecholamines, mainly consisting of noradrenaline (1-5). The cardiac tissue takes up exogenously administered noradrenaline (6-8) and stores it for relatively long periods of time (6, 9, 10).The sympathectomy causes marked depletion of catecholamines in the sympathetic nerve terminal. Remarkable depletion of the cardiac catecholamines caused by the stellate ganglionectomy in the cat (11) suggests the dominant participation of the post ganglionic fibers originating in, or craniad to, the stellate ganglion, to the sympathetic innervation on the heart. In the dog, on the other hand, cardiac catecholamines are hardly depleted by bilateral resection of the stellate ganglion and thoracic sympathetic chain and ganglia, but depleted by extensive resection of the nerve plexus adjacent to the heart (12). On the basis of the physiological studies, Pannier (13) has indicated that the sym pathetic cardiac accelerance nerves of the dog, at least in some part, pass through the stellate ganglion without changing neuron.The following experiments were performed in an attempt to know how is the capa city of the dog heart to take up and store exogenously administered noradrenaline affected by the stellate ganglionectomy which causes only partial decreases in endogenous noradrenaline levels. METHODSMongrel dogs weighing 5 to 8 kg and of either sex were used. Determination of ' noradrenalineThe dogs anesthetized with pentobarbital sodium (40 mg/kg, i.p.) were killed by ex sanguination from the femoral arteries. Immediately the heart was removed and cleaned up by perfusion through the coronary vessels with chilled Tyrode's solution. Then the heart was divided into following portions: right (RA) and left (LA) atrium, right (RV) and left (LV) ventricle and ventricular septum (VS). Both the RV and LV were sub divided into the ventral and dorsal wall by vertical cutting. After blotting with filter paper and weighing, the tissue pieces were minced and homogenized in cooled 0.4 N

Monoaminergic pathways to the coronary arteries and to the myocardium

“…15). Similar results were obtained by morphological [Woolard, 1926;Hirsch, 1967;Denn and Stone, 1976], functional [Pannier, 1947] and biochemical techniques [Hikosaka, 1966],…”

Adrenergic innervation of the coronary arteries and the myocardium

“…Using biochemical quanti tative methods. Shore et al [1958], Klouda [1963] and Hikosaka [1966] also prove that the level of noradrenaline in the atria is twice as high as that in the ventricles. Thus the exten sive dense innervation of the auricles may be regarded as established.…”