Arterial blood pressure waves in the absence of functioning aortic and carotid chemoreceptors

¹ Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Mississippi School of Medicine, Jackson, Mississippi

Dogs under pentobarbital anesthesia were subjected to chemoreceptor inactivation by intra-arterial injection of 0.5 n acetic acid close to the sites of the carotid and aortic chemoreceptors. Both damped blood pressure waves (elicited by abdominal pressure) and spontaneous sustained pressure waves of the Mayer type were demonstrated without functioning chemoreceptors. These waves could be demonstrated at all levels of mean arterial blood pressure at which the pressoreceptors were responsive. Since no waves of either the damped or sustained variety can be elicited when both the chemoreceptors and the pressoreceptors are destroyed it is concluded that the pressoreceptors alone are capable of supplying sufficient feedback to cause these arterial pressure waves.