| dc.description.abstract | Background: Coronary artery disease is the leading cause of death in the developed countries and myocardial infarction is the most serious manifestation of
the disease. Swine are being chosen with increasing frequency as subject for
interventional cardiology research. Their similarities to humans in their cardiovascular physiology, size and coronary anatomy make them better experimental
subjects than most species. Moreover, regular human coronary catheter systems
and techniques can be readily used to access their coronary vasculature.
Objectives: In this paper, a simple swine model of human myocardial infarction
is studied in detail using a percutaneously inserted balloon catheter. The main
role of the present paper is to introduce and troubleshoot the technique and its
potential pitfalls.
Materials and Methods: Myocardial infarction was confirmed by the detection
of ST segment elevation on the surface ECG, total creatine kinase release, gadolinium enhanced contrast MRI scan and by histology.
Results and Discussion: We conclude that if investigators are familiar with
both human and animal research, this model is practical, inexpensive and can
provide reproducible and consistent infarct sizes that closely mimic the human
myocardial infarction. With very careful technique inducing LAD infarction distal
to the second diagonal branch and done by trained team, our mortality was lower
than in the literature, only 12.5%. It was also proven that the size of myocardial
infarction induced by this technique was big enough to be used for different
interventional cardiology research. From our study, it is clearly visible, that only a
close collaboration between veterinary medicine and human cardiology can avoid
the difficulties of complex swine coronary experiments and leads to success. | en_US |
