Kawashima S, et al. - In this observational open-label pharmacodynamics cohort study, researchers examined 28 patients undergoing on-pump, beating coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), to investigate the most effective dose of landiolol to decrease the heart rate (HR). During left internal thoracic artery (LITA) to left anterior descending artery (LAD) anastomosis, the starting dose of landiolol was increased to 15, 25, and 35 μg/kg/min at 10-min intervals. They defined the percent decrease in HR based on the landiolol dose by characterizing pharmacodynamics by means of a sigmoidal inhibitory maximum effect model. Landiolol was found to maximally decrease HR just over 20% of the baseline HR. Therefore, they expected landiolol 25 μg/kg/min to be a sufficient dose during LITA–LAD anastomosis during on-pump, beating CABG.