Matt Hagen presented his abstract at Vascular Biology 2023 (NAVBO) in Newport, Rhode Island: Coronary microvascular adaptation to left ventricular inflow obstruction in the late-gestation fetal lamb.
In this model, the right ventricle does all the work of circulating blood, but unlike what you might expect, its mass didn’t increase. What did change—dramatically—was coronary microvascular blood flow. Using microbubble contrast-enhanced ultrasound imaging, Matt showed that blood flow in the right ventricular capillaries increased several-fold. This technique tracks how quickly microbubbles refill the tissue after being cleared by ultrasound pulses, giving a dynamic readout of perfusion.
We’re excited by this work because it suggests the fetal heart adapts in ways that don’t follow the usual “bigger muscle, more work” pattern—and may point to strategies for supporting hearts under stress before birth.