Rat Electrocardiography and General Anesthesia

Abstract

General anesthesia is an established and well-known factor with a significant impact on cardiac parameters, which can be a problem in the final evaluation of changes in the individual electrophysiological myocardial parameters after various interventions. The present chapter provides a composite review of published data on electrocardiographic parameters (heart rate, PR interval, P wave duration, P wave amplitude, QRS complex, QT and QTc interval duration, and R wave and T wave amplitude) for in vivo rat experiments under general anesthesia from 130 articles, which were retrieved from a search of the Web of Science database, for articles published mainly between 2000 and 2021. ECG parameters reported as baseline or control values were summarized, and averages with ranges were calculated. It is important to be cautious in interpreting the results of such studies and discussions addressing the mechanisms underlying a given type of arrhythmia, it is important to acknowledge that initial ECG parameters may already be affected to some extent by general anesthesia as well as by sex and the time of day the experiments are performed. Although it is not an original research work, researchers working with rats in the laboratory, who routinely perform anesthesia, can use this as a reference to look into while analyzing their data.