Heterotopic transplanted rat heart: a model for in vivo determination of phosphorus metabolites during ischemia and reperfusion

A model of heterotopic isogenic rat heart transplantation was developed in order to noninvasively observe the acute and chronic metabolic changes of ischemia. This study presents the results of ³¹P spectroscopy during acute global ischemia and reperfusion. The advantages of this model over other surface coil in vivo ischemia experiments are: (1) Thoracotomy for surface coil positioning is not required, thus the results are not influenced by the effect of recent major surgery. (2) Survival is not influenced by the degree of ischemic damage to the transplant, and the model enables repeated long‐term studies of the metabolic effect of reversible ischemia, and myocardial infarction. (3) The pathologic process created is homogeneous and thus the results are not complicated by variation in the severity of myocardial ischemia.