[Changes in the functional status of the left-ventricular myocardium during dying and in the early postresuscitation...

Experiments on dogs have shown that left-ventricular contractility reduces and the processes of contraction and relaxation are discoordinated during the first minutes of dying from acute blood loss with the mean arterial pressure of 40 mm Hg. During the postreanimation period following a ten-min clinical death spontaneous respiration is resumed late (after 15.1 +/- 3.2 min), as are the corneal reflexes (after 46.1 +/- 8.5 min). If there are no changes in left-ventricular contractility in the course of dying, vital functions of the organism and neurological reflexes recover sooner (respiration after 6.1 +/- 2.0 min and corneal reflexes after 32.6 +/- 4.1 min). A relationship has been revealed between the severity of the postreanimation period and the degree of reduction of left-ventricular myocardial contractility during hypoperfusion (1 to 6 hrs after reanimation): the contractility index in animals with late neurologic recovery was lower than in those with a relatively early neurologic recovery.