Mechanism of the Increased Venous Return and Cardiac Output Caused by Epinephrine

¹ From the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, Mississippi

The effect of epinephrine on venous return has been measured in 11 dogs under total spinal anesthesia. The mechanism by which epinephrine increases venous return seems to be to increase the tone of the vascular walls thereby increasing the mean circulatory pressure. This in turn increases the pressure gradient forcing blood from the systemic vessels toward the right atrium. By equating the recorded venous return curves with curves that depict the effect of epinephrine on the heart's ability to pump blood, it is shown that under normal operating conditions cardiac output is determined far more by the tendency for blood to return to the heart than by the heart's ability to pump blood.