Figure 14.

Skeletal muscle blood flow responses to auto-perfusion generated when a circuit connecting the hindlimbs of anesthetized pigs is isolated from the heart and the hindlimbs are electrically stimulated to contract. The pumping actions of the muscle contractions can increase blood flow in the absence of the heart and a normal arterial pressure. This shows that the skeletal muscle pump operating in isolation can generate some blood flow, but this increase in flow is modest at best compared with the large increases in skeletal muscle blood flow associated with exercise, but interpretation is not completely straightforward in the absence of normal perfusion pressure and gas exchange. The solid lines with various symbols represent the individual responses from each of the five pigs studied. The dashed line represents the averaged response for the five pigs (mean is based on 1 experiment from each of the 5 pigs). [Adapted from Sheriff and Van Bibber (437).]