Heart rate and blood pressure during exercise in dogs with autonomic denervation

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Abstract
In 21 dogs with various degrees of autonomic denervation, continuous recording of mean aortic blood pressure was made during treadmill exercise at 7.5 km/hr and a 10% grade. A marked fall of blood pressure was elicited by exercise both in the totally denervated dogs and those denervated but with the stellate ganglion intact (17 and 30%, respectively). In dogs bilaterally vagotomized and sympathectomized from T1 to T7 plus bilateral ablation of lumbar sympathetic chains, blood pressure increased about 16% to 127 mm Hg. These dogs, and also those with intact stellate ganglion, showed a heart rate increase of about 30%, whereas in dogs deprived of all sympathetic chains, cardiac acceleration was negligible. Heart rate increased about 2-fold in control dogs whereas blood pressure augmented 16% to 113 mm Hg. It is suggested that heart rate limitation was not responsible for decreased blood pressure in denervated dogs.