Acute Anterior Descending Coronary Artery Ligation, Ventricular Fibrillation, and Ventricular Assistance: Survival Following These in the Miniature Pig

Lumb^1-4 has demonstrated that gradual occlusion of the coronary arteries in the pig allows nonfunctional collateral vessels to become functional in the ischemic myocardium.

Lumb² and Garamella⁵ demonstrated that acute occlusion of the left anterior descending coronary artery in the pig consistently produced ventricular fibrillation within 30 minutes. Our previous data⁶ confirmed this finding.

Skinner⁷ demonstrated increased survival of dogs when acute occlusion of the left circumflex coronary artery was supported by mechanical ventricular assistance for five hours. Following acute occlusion of the left anterior descending coronary artery in the pig and ventricular fibrillation, we⁶ demonstrated that ventricular assistance for three hours allowed all hearts to be defibrillated with survival for 30 to 180 minutes.

This experiment was devised to determine whether six hours of ventricular assistance with the Anstadt Ventricular Assistor⁸ would allow nonfunctioning coronary collaterals to become functional and increase survival