A previous study in dogs indicated that preconditioning (PC) of a specific myocardial region not only evoked a local cardioprotective effect but also rendered remote myocardium resistant to infarction. In the present study we devised a method to test for remote PC in the rabbit which it is not possible to ligate two separate coronary branches on the same heart. In situ hearts were subjected to PC with two cycles of 5-min regional ischemia/5-min reperfusion. Following this in vivo PC protocol, the hearts were removed and perfused on a Langendorff apparatus with crystalloid buffer. They then underwent 30 min of global ischemia with the entire left ventricle at risk followed by 2 h of reperfusion. At the end of the experiment the myocardium previously subjected to the in vivo PC protocol (preconditioned region) was identified as the tissue without fluorescence after fluorescent particles had been injected into the aortic root following reocclusion of the snared branch of the left coronary artery. Infarcted myocardium was identified by triphenyltetrazolium chloride staining. Tissue salvage was observed only in the preconditioned region where 13.2 +/- 3.6% of the myocardium infarcted as opposed to 44.6 +/- 1.3% in the remaining non-preconditioned left ventricular tissue (p < 0.05, n = 6). In sham-operated hearts (snare but no PC), infarction was similar in both the snared vessel's perfusion territory and the rest of the left ventricular myocardium (49.2 +/- 6.5% vs. 43.7 +/- 3.7%, n = 5). Hence PC of one myocardial region does not necessarily confer PC protection to all regions of the heart. Because remote PC could not be demonstrated in rabbits, this phenomenon may be species or protocol-specific, and should not be assumed to occur in man.