Impaired Right Coronary Vasodilator Function in Pulmonary Hypertensive Rats Assessed by In Vivo Synchrotron Microangiography

Pulmonary hypertension (PH) causes cardiac hypertrophy in the right ventricle (RV) and eventually leads to RV failure due to persistently elevated afterload. Considerable clinical and experimental animal studies have shown that abnormalities of endothelial function represent a hallmark of heart failure. However, the relationships between right coronary endothelial dysfunction and the development of heart failure remain to be fully established especially in the right heart. Synchrotron radiation (SR) microangiography has provided the temporal and spatial resolution required to visualize microvessels of various organs in vivo [1]. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to validate a new approach for the in vivo assessment of endothelial coronary function of the rat right heart using SR microangiography.