Studies on the effect of quinones on cardiac function has been conducted with normal hearts. But not with injured hearts, I.e. ischemia/reperfusion-injured heart. Quinone compounds are known to produce oxygen free radicals during metabolism, and for this reason, quinones are implicated in the aggravation of ischemia/reperfusion injury or cardioprotection, as in the case of ischemic preconditioning depending on the experimental conditions. The present study was carried out to examine the effect of 2-chloro-3-(4-cyanophenylamino)-1.4-naphthoquinone (NQ-Y15) on cardiac function of ischemic/reperfused and normal rat hearts. In isolated perfused hearts, various functional parameters such as left ventricular developed pressure (LVDP), left ventricular end-diastolic pressure (EDP) and maximum positive and negative dP/dt ($[pm}dP/dt_{max}$), time to contracture, heart rate (HR) and coronary flow rate (CFR) were measured before and 30 min after dosing and following 25 min ischemia/30min reperfusion. NQ-Y15 increased LVDP, +dP/$d_{max}$and -dP/$dt_{min}$ by 18%. 30%, and 40%, respectively. There were no significant changes in other haemodynamic parameters. After ischemia/reperfusion injury, pretreatment with NQ-Y15 induced a significant decrease in LVDP and $[pm}dP/dt_{max}$, but an increase in EDP. LDH-release was not significantly increased. These results suggested that NQ-Y15 may augment the ventricular contractility but it makes hearts more vulnerable to ischemia/reperfusion injury.