RT Book, Section A1 Lewandowski, Klaus A2 Tobin, Martin J. SR Print(0) ID 57080538 T1 Chapter 61. Nitric Oxide as an Adjunct T2 Principles and Practice of Mechanical Ventilation, 3e YR 2013 FD 2013 PB The McGraw-Hill Companies PP New York, NY SN 978-0-07-173626-8 LK accessmedicine.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=57080538 RD 2024/03/29 AB As the saying goes, unexpected scientific discoveries are often the most important. The “principle of limited sloppiness,” a term coined to describe fortuitous or accidental discoveries, hit in the 1970s, when Zawadski, a technician in the laboratories of Robert F. Furchgott, failed to follow his superior’s directions correctly and did not remove the endothelium in a rabbit aorta preparation. In this preparation, acetylcholine caused potent relaxation whereas contraction was expected. Shortly thereafter, it was established that acetylcholine was acting on endothelial cell receptors to produce a substance that could diffuse to the vascular smooth muscle and initiate its relaxation.1 This substance was called endothelium-derived relaxing factor. It took another 8 years for independent working groups to confirm that the chemical structure of endothelium-derived relaxing factor was identical to that of nitric oxide (NO).2,3