NMR Study of Damage on Isolated Perfused Rat Heart Exposed to Ischemia and Hypoxia

Myocardial ischemia is the most common and primary cause of myocardium damage. Numerous conventional techniques and methods have been developed for ischemia and reperfusion studies. However, because of damage to the heart sample, most of these techniques can not be used to continuously monitor the full dynamic course of the myocardial metabolic pathway. The nuclear magnetic resonnance (NMR) surface coil technique, which overcomes the limitations of conventional instrumentation, can be used to quantitatively study every stage of the perfused heart (especially after perfusion stoppage) continuously, dynamically, and without damage under normal or designed physiological conditions at the molecular level. In this paper, ³¹P -NMR was used to study the effects of ischemia and hypoxia on isolated perfused hearts. The results show that complete hypoxia caused more severe functional damage to the myocardial cells than complete ischemia.