The importance of sodium concentration on the incidence of fibrillation during coronary arteriography in dogs.

Abstract

Coronary arteriography is known to produce electrical disturbances including conduction disturbances, arrhythmias, and ventricular fibrillation. A canine model for studying ventricular fibrillation has been developed that uses relatively long injections in the right coronary artery. In experiments in 49 dogs over a five-year period, the authors have consistently observed that with low osmolality contrast media, the incidence of ventricular fibrillation becomes quite high when the formulation contains less than 3.2 mmol/L sodium. This effect seems independent of the concentration of the contrast media molecules. High concentrations of the ionic monomer diatrizoate cause fibrillation despite high sodium concentrations.