Myocardial blood flow and function with critical coronary stenosis in exercising dogs.

Critical stenosis of coronary arteries does not alter myocardial blood flow (MBF) at rest, but eliminates hyperemia and corresponds to a degree of arterial narrowing that expends subendocardial vasodilator reserve. Because subepicardial vasodilator reserve remains with critical stenosis at rest, we tested the significance of this reserve in six exercising dogs chronically instrumented to measure MBF (microspheres), regional function (systolic wall thickening with sonomicrometers), and coronary blood flow velocity (CBFV, pulsed Doppler). Critical stenosis produced with a hydraulic occluder limited CBFV and mean MBF to the resting level during treadmill exercise, but MBF was maldistributed. Subendocardial MBF decreased 50% (P less than 0.05) and subepicardial MBF increased 104% (P less than 0.01) compared with resting control conditions, suggesting that a transmural "steal" phenomenon had occurred, with augmented MBF in the subepicardial region at the expense of subendocardial MBF. Systolic wall thickening decreased markedly from 31.5 +/- 6.8 to 9.4 +/- 2.0% (P less than 0.01) during exercise, indicating that use of subepicardial vasodilator reserve with critical stenosis had little sustaining effect on regional contractile performance. Rather, subepicardial vasodilator reserve is potentially deleterious, inasmuch as a steal effect could contribute to reduced subendocardial perfusion, the primary determinant of systolic wall thickening.