Regional increase in isolated myocyte volume in chronic myocardial infarction in cats

Healing of myocardial infarction is associated with hypertrophy of a region surrounding the scar. In order to characterize the pattern of regional hypertrophy after healing of small myocardial infarctions, we used a Coulter Channelyzer to measure directly regional cell volume and light microscopy to measure cell length of isolated myocytes. Acute left ventricular myocardial infarctions were surgically created in adult cat hearts. After healing for 10.4 +/- 5.0 months, cells were dissociated by collagenase perfusion. Myocardial cells were isolated from three regions of the infarcted ventricle and the same three anatomical regions of unoperated control hearts: (1) remote from the infarct, (2) non-scarred tissues adjacent to the infarct, and (3) from the infarct. The volume of cells from control hearts was correlated significantly with individual body weight resulting in large inter-animal variations, but small intra-animal variations. Inter-animal comparisons were made by normalizing adjacent and infarct regions to percent change from its remote region. Myocyte volumes from hearts with healed infarcts were increased by 31% in the infarct region and by 20% in the adjacent region, relative to the corresponding regions from control hearts (P less than 0.05). Cell lengths were not different from control in any region. Calculated cross-sectional areas followed the same pattern as was observed for cell volumes. We conclude that there is a region of hypertrophy surrounding a small, transmural healed myocardial infarction that is characterized by increased myocyte cross sectional area with no change in cell length. This pattern is typical of the concentric hypertrophy observed with pressure overload rather than eccentric hypertrophy observed with volume overload.