Coronary sinus pressure and arterial flow during intermittent coronary sinus occlusion

The relationship between coronary artery flow and coronary venous pressure during intermittent coronary sinus occlusion was studied in dogs at normal perfusion, left anterior descending artery occlusion, and reperfusion. Coronary sinus occlusion and release phases were varied systematically. The periodicity of the data and the assumption of a linear relationship between pressure and flow suggested Fourier analysis as a methodological approach. To show the systematic slow oscillations of coronary venous pressure and arterial flow induced by intermittent occlusion of the coronary sinus, the data were smoothed by superimposing consecutive cycles of identical occlusion-release timing and filtering the higher frequencies. A small number of Fourier components, corresponding to the time scale of the respective occlusion-release cycle, was sufficient to study the long wavelength behavior. The effect of arbitrarily varying the occlusion-to-release ratio at a given total cycle length was investigated in hypothetical pressure and flow curves based on interpolation of experimental Fourier coefficients. By means of a transfer function relating pressure and flow in the frequency domain, it was possible to predict the arterial flow curve using coronary venous pressure measurements only. Because at zero frequency the pressure-flow relationship cannot be assumed to be linear, the mean value of flow could not be obtained in this way. However, the deviation of flow from the mean, i.e., the shape of the flow curve, was reproduced satisfactorily.