Invasive left ventricular catheterization
occlusion of the IVC, loop and arterial blood pressure
Left ventricular catheterization was performed as described (da Silva Gonçalves Bós et al., PV loops were recorded at steady‐state and then during preload reduction by a brief occlusion of the IVC. All recordings were made with the rat apneic by briefly suspending ventilation (~5–10 s). PV loop and arterial blood pressure data were acquired using an MPVS‐300 (Millar Instruments) connected to a ML880 PowerLab 16/30 (ADInstruments, NSW, Australia) and recorded in CHART software (v.5.5.6, ADInstruments) at a sampling rate of 1000 Hz. PV‐loop analysis was conducted off‐line using LabChart (v7.0, ADInstruments) and PVAN (v3.6, Millar Instruments).