College Answer

Inotropes are drugs that increase the force and velocity of myocardial contraction resulting 
in increased contractility and stroke volume and hence cardiac output.Good answers were 
those that adopted a systematic approach, such as providing a coherent list of ideal 
properties that included pharmaceutical, pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamics 
characteristics, and then contrasted adrenaline against that list. The area less well covered 
was that of those aspects of adrenaline that made it less than an ideal inotrope, e.g. it 
increases myocardial oxygen consumption, causes tachyarrhythmias,tolerancemay 
develop, hyperglycaemia, lactic acid production, etc