Key result
Hemoperfused slaughterhouse pig hearts provide a stable alternative to small animal models for assessing cardiac function.
Why the study?
A hemoperfused slaughterhouse pig heart model provides a more clinically relevant platform than small laboratory animal hearts and reduces animal experiments.
The isolated hemoperfused slaughterhouse pig heart model provides a viable, large-animal experimental platform that can maintain stable function for several hours, potentially reducing the need for live animal experiments.
May reduce live-animal cardiac studies; leaves open validation of long-term stability and generalizability.
A model of hemoperfused slaughterhouse pighearts is described providing a wide range of applications which leads to a reduction in animal experiments. The size of a pigheart, heart rate, coronary perfusion, metabolism, etc. are more comparable to conditions in patients than those in hearts of small laboratory animals. Global heart function can be assessed either by measuring stroke volume, ejection fraction, Emax etc. in the working model or by measuring intraventricular pressure with balloon catheters in the isovolumetric model. Regional cardiac function can be measured by sonomicrometry and ischemic and non-ischemic areas can be compared. Local metabolic changes are measurable as well with microdialysis. Cardiac function can be kept on any given functional level by infusion of norepinephrine in spite of the fact that functional parameters are lower without adrenergic drive in vitro than in vivo. Stable heart function can be maintained for several hours with only 500 to 1000 ml of blood because the blood is permanently regenerated by a special dialysis system. This model can be applied in many research projects dealing with reperfusion injuries, inotropic, antiarrhythmic or arrhythmogenic effects of certain drugs, immunological rejection, evaluation of imaging systems (NMR, echocardiography etc.) or cardiac assist devices.
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Modersohn et al. (2001) studied this question. Isolated hemoperfused slaughterhouse pig heart model was evaluated. An isolated hemoperfused slaughterhouse pig heart model provides a stable alternative to small animal models for assessing global and regional cardiac function, reducing the need for animal experiments.
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