Of 21 dogs undergoing ligation of the left anterior descending coronary artery and 50% stenosis of the left circumflex coronary artery, 15 developed intractable ventricular fibrillation and underwent 1 added hour of femoro-femoral bypass. Three hearts were removed after 1 hour on bypass without myocardial reperfusion for biochemical and mitochondrial analysis. After the 1 hour, five underwent unmodified blood reperfusion on bypass; seven underwent 1 hour of aortic clamping on vented bypass to simulate coronary artery bypass grafting with multidose blood cardioplegic reperfusion. Regional systolic shortening was measured with ultrasonic crystals and cardiac output was measured by thermodilution techniques. All six hearts with no ventricular fibrillation or with reversible ventricular fibrillation and hearts that were not reperfused developed cardiogenic shock (40% decrease in stroke work index, p less than 0.05) because of persistent left ventricular dyskinesia (-40% of systolic shortening, p less than 0.05) and progressive circumflex hypocontractility (48% systolic shortening, p less than 0.05) and showed extensive (68%) triphenyltetrazolium chloride nonstaining. Two dogs died of left ventricular power failure (33% mortality rate). In contrast, 11 of 12 dogs that were reperfused could be weaned from bypass (8% mortality rate). The four dogs surviving after unmodified blood reperfusion (20% mortality rate) showed severe residual left ventricular dysfunction (39% of control stroke work index, p less than 0.05), had equivocal recovery of anterior contractility (10% +/- 7% of systolic shortening), had marginal recovery of contractility in the remote myocardium (60% +/- 11% of systolic shortening), and had extensive triphenyltetrazolium chloride nonstaining (58%). Conversely, all seven dogs with intractable ventricular fibrillation undergoing controlled reperfusion after 4 hours of ischemia recovered normal stroke work index (91%), regained 23% of systolic shortening in the region supplied by the left anterior descending coronary artery (p less than 0.05), 125% of systolic shortening in the circumflex region (p less than 0.05), and showed only 25% triphenyltetrazolium chloride nonstaining (p less than 0.05). These results suggest aggressive treatment of intractable ventricular fibrillation after acute myocardial infarction by providing reperfusion on bypass can salvage hearts thought previously to be damaged irreversibly.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)