Angina-like cardiac disturbances of hypothalamic etiology in cat, monkey, and man.
Angina-like phenomena of CNS etiology were studied. Data were collected and analyzed from clinical cases of cerebral hematoma, concussion, and tumors in which cardiological disturbances were observed consequent to compressive brain lesions or surgical brain manipulations. The cases in which the disturbances were largely angina-like and without ectopic beats or arrhythmias were chosen for study. The brain region most significantly related to this phenomenon seemed to be the hypothalamus. Experiments conducted in cats and monkeys showed that stimulation of specific sites in the hypothalamus resulted in angina-like manifestations with no other cardiac changes. These data support our working hypothesis that a cerebrally induced syndrome that is conspicuously angina-like must be related to hypothalamic involvement. In the awake monkey hypothalamic stimulation caused angina-like ECG changes and behavior suggestive of referred pain. In some cases, repetitions of the stimulations or irritations in all of the species resulted in permanent pathological myocardial changes, mostly bleeding into the myocardium. In some animals there were minute hemorrhagic necroses that were subepicardial in distribution. It is significant that the most severe or permanent pathological changes were found in cases in which the angina-like ECG alterations were persistent. There were also cases, however, with persistent angina-like ECG changes that showed no such pathology.
D000293:Adolescent; D000787:Angina Pectoris / Q000209:etiology*; D000818:Animals; D001927:Brain Diseases / Q000150:complications; D001932:Brain Neoplasms / Q000150:complications*; D002415:Cats; D002543:Cerebral Hemorrhage / Q000150:complications; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D004562:Electrocardiography; D004806:Ependymoma / Q000150:complications; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007031:Hypothalamus; D008297:Male; D008579:Meningioma / Q000150:complications; D008875:Middle Aged; D012453:Saimiri; D013045:Species Specificity