Introduction
Cardiolab simulates the responses of an anesthetized rat to the same drugs your colleagues taking the laboratory will employ in the actual surgery exercises. This makes it possible to collect data for analysis. Please note that you can obtain and report numerical values for heart rate and blood pressure using Cardiolab.
Please review the experimental procedures and experiments described in the Measurement and Regulation of Blood Pressure in the BSCI 441 Laboratory section of the Web site. This will provide essential information on the methods of surgery and data collection that are used in this model. Note that Cardiolab places the animal on a respirator, so you will not observe any changes in the respiratory rate.
Running the Cardiolab Program
Enter the Cardiovascular menu on the computer and choose the Cardiolab simulation. You will be asked to make the following selections:
• 1 to run color;
• 1 to express drug doses in µg/kg
of body weight;
• 1 to obtain BP in mm Hg;
• 2 to utilize the American names for the
pharmacological agents;
• 3 to use an animal that has not been pretreated;
• 1 to display the data on the screen (the
Print Screen key will allow you to obtain a hard copy of important
data).
At this point you will be looking at the data screen which plots Systolic and Diastolic Blood Pressures (axis on the left) and heart rate (axis on the right) as dependent variables vs. Time (x axis independent variable). After administering an agent, the computer will plot the results for the next 3 minutes. The agents and treatments that may be utilized are listed in the table on the next page. Some of the drugs have suggested dosages in µg/kg.
You will recognize most of the listed agents. Descriptions of their sites of action will be listed in the laboratory. Complete descriptions may be found in the Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics by Gilman, Goodman and Gilman.
Please note that
you will have to use Option # 28 (Advance Time) to allow for the effects
of an antagonist to subside. Usually 10 minutes is more than enough
in this program.
TABLE 1: Cardiolab Choices
INJECT:
| 1. Saline alone | 14. Hexamethonium Br |
| 2. Norepinephrine HCl (1-5) | 15. Propranolol HCl |
| 3. Vasopressin (2-10) | 16. Prazosin HCl |
| 4. Angiotensin (0.2-2) | 17. Atropine sulfate (10 -50) |
| 5. DMPP iodide | 18. Mepyramine maleate |
| 6. Epinephrine bitartrate (1-5) | 19. Ranitidine HCl |
| 7. Tyramine HCl | 20. Yohimbine HCl |
| 8. Phenylephrine HCl (1-5) | 21. Atenolol HCl |
| 9. B-HT 920 diHCl | 22. Nifedipine |
| 10 Acetylcholine Br (1-5) | 23. Phenoxybenzamine HCl |
| 11. Isoproterenol sulfate | 24. Cocaine HCl |
| 12. Histamine (1-5) | 25. Neostigmine Br |
| 13. Unknown |
STIMULATE (preganglionically) THE:
26. vagus (parasympathetic)
27. cardioaccelerator (sympathetic)
Advance time.....28
Terminate the preparation......29
___________________________________________________________________
Experiments
Your task is quite simple: please complete the experiments listed in the Measurement and Recording of Blood Pressure exercise found elsewhere (see the BSCI 441 Laboratory section) in this manual. (In some cases, you may be required to use different doses of some agents in Cardiolab.) Then you may explore some of the other agents. Finally, please take some time to identify the site of action of the Unknown drug listed by the program.
The results of these
investigations may be summarized on the data pages contained in the laboratory
exercise cited above.