W. p. GEIS AND M. P. KAYE 
309 
Figure 11. — Regional Denervation of the Canine Heart. 
Lt. Lateral View of Heart 
parasympathetic innervation of AV node, It.-sided 
origin. 
sider if we have a partially or totally denervated 
preparation. 
Chairman M. P. Kaye: Thank you very 
much, Dr. Weber and Dr. Geis. We v^^ill take 
the next 5-10 minutes for Dr. Peters of the 
University of Utah to discuss briefly precondi- 
tioning, implantation, and postoperative care 
of calves with artificial hearts used at the Uni- 
versity of Utah. 
Jeffrey L. Peters, University of Utah, Salt 
Lake City : I'd like to review briefly some of our 
experiences with more than 70 calves with total 
heart implants in the last 2 years and talk to 
you about our methodology. 
First, we've tried to improve the quality of 
the calf prior to delivery to our facilities. In 
order to do this, we set up an extremely elab- 
orate preconditioning program. Our calves were 
obtained from dairies in Utah and brought to a 
large facility that could hold 600-800 calves at 
one time. The facility had a nursery that held 
300 baby calves in elevated pens who were fed 
a special diet of alfalfa pellets and milk sub- 
stitutes. 
They were then weaned and transferred to 
growing pens of cement with straw and flushing 
troughs, and these educated calves deficated 
and urinated in the troughs, not on the straw. 
These calves were immunized against calf dis- 
eases, and we had a double blood scan run on 
each before it was brought to our facility. When 
they arrived, we ran more blood scans and did 
respiratory function studies. Our calves were 
all one breed, Holstein, and all approximately 
