Death resulting from acute neurogenic cardiovascular failure have been divided into
primary shock caused by parasymphathetic stimulation and ventricular fibrillation caused
by symphatheticoadrenal stimulation. Morphological characteristics have not been
established in gross and microscopical findings in either cases. Hence this experiment
was designed to provide some positive findings in differentiating these two cause of
death.
Primary shock or ventricular fibrillation was induced by electrical stimulation of the
vagus nerve (5 volt, 50Hz, 1.0msec.) and of the chest wall(120 volt, 50Hz, A.C.),
respectively and rat myocardium were observed with electron microscope.
1) The heart of the rat which died from primary shock revealed relatively normal
pattern of ultrastructural architectures in the myofilaments, myofibrils, sarcomeres, 2
lines, mitochondria and other sarcoplasmic organelles.
2) The heart of the rat which died from ventricular fibrillation revealed shortening and
scalloping of the sarcomerea of the 2 lines, distortion of the myofilaments around the
intercalated disc and displacement of the mitochondria away from the intercalated disc,
appear to be similar to those of zonal lesion seen in the hemorrhagic shock.
Furthermore, marked changes were noted in mitochondria. These changes consisted of
swelling, destruction of the cristae, and abnormal cystic space formation with or without
amorphous materialistic depression of glycogen particles were present.
From these results, it might be suggested that the ultrastructural findings of the heart
could provide the morphological differences between death from Primary shock and
ventricular fibrillation.
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