An experimental assessment of macroscopic enzyme techniques for the autopsy demonstration of myocardial infarction.

Experimental cardiac infarction produced in dogs by coronary artery ligation has been used to investigate the value of macroscopic histochemical enzyme loss in the diagnosis of myocardial infarction at post-mortem. Creative phosphokinase and non-specific dehydrogenase methods gave the best results but became positive only 5-6 hr after infarction. It is concluded that the method is of limited value in autopsy practice.