Longitudinal Validation of Right Ventricular Pressure Monitoring for the Assessment of Right Ventricular Systolic Dysfunction in a Large Animal Ischemic Model.

Unlabelled: Right ventricular (RV) dysfunction is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in intensive care and cardiac surgery. Early detection of RV dysfunction may be facilitated by continuous monitoring of RV waveform obtained from a pulmonary artery catheter. The objective is to evaluate the extent to which RV pressure monitoring can detect changes in RV systolic performance assess by RV end-systolic elastance (E) following the development of an acute RV ischemic in a porcine model.

Endpoints for mouse abdominal tumor models: refinement of current criteria.

Accurate, rapid, and noninvasive health assessments are required to establish more appropriate endpoints in mouse cancer models where tumor size is not easily measured. We evaluated potential endpoints in mice with experimentally induced peritoneal lymphoma, an abdominal tumor model, by comparing body weight, body condition, and behavior with those of a control group of mice not developing lymphoma. Our hypothesis was that body weight would increase or plateau, whereas body condition and behavioral scores would decrease, as disease progressed.