Functional and morphological damage after local heart irradiation and/or adriamycin in Wistar rats

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Abstract
The hearts of Wistar rats were locally irradiated with 15–30 Gy single doses of 300 kV X‐rays or animals were intravenously injected by single doses of 1–3 mg/kg body weight of adriamycin. Animals were followed until death or for between 320 and 710 days. After irradiation, congestive heart failure occurred with a dose‐dependent latency, which was significantly longer if the atria were excluded from the irradiation field. Cardiac output started to decrease after about 3 months, well before myocardial degeneration was noted, but it did not depend on radiation dose. After adriamycin, cardiac output showed a dose‐dependent drop within 2 weeks to plateau and never recovered to the control values. Capillary density 400 days after treatment was reduced both after irradiation and after adriamycin. Irradiation with 20 Gy 6 months after adriamycin decreased capillary density even further.