抄録
It has been shown that the heart of the mammals contains relatively large amount of catecholamines, mainly consisting of noradrenaline (1-5). The cardiac tissue takes up exogenously administered noradrenaline (6-8) and stores it for relatively long periods of time (6, 9, 10).
The sympathectomy causes marked depletion of catecholamines in the sympathetic nerve terminal. Remarkable depletion of the cardiac catecholamines caused by the stellate ganglionectomy in the cat (11) suggests the dominant participation of the postganglionic fibers originating in, or craniad to, the stellate ganglion, to the sympathetic innervation on the heart. In the dog, on the other hand, cardiac catecholamines are hardly depleted by bilateral resection of the stellate ganglion and thoracic sympathetic chain and ganglia, but depleted by extensive resection of the nerve plexus adjacent to the heart (12). On the basis of the physiological studies, Pannier (13) has indicated that the sympathetic cardiac accelerance nerves of the dog, at least in some part, pass through the stellate ganglion without changing neuron.
The following experiments were performed in an attempt to know how is the capacity of the dog heart to take up and store exogenously administered noradrenaline affected by the stellate ganglionectomy which causes only partial decreases in endogenous noradrenaline levels.
