Molecular Cardiology for the Cardiologist provides a short, easily readable summary of what the new biology brings to cardiology. With this in mind, special efforts have been made to present many comprehensive schemes and drawings, as well as teaching tables.
The five parts of the book provide a general introduction to the new language of biology; the normal structure of the heart and blood vessels; the physiopathology and the new therapeutic avenues that have been opened up by the new biology.
A concise summary of the keys that assist the cardiologist or student who...

In 1979 Dr Sperelakis published the Origin of the Cardiac Resting Potential' in the Handbook of Physiology of the Heart. Since that time, many investigators and teachers of membrane biophysics have used this article as a source of reference on the fundamental principles and equations describing the factors that establish the resting potential in excitable and non-excitable cells. Professor Sperelakis has expanded the scope of this article to provide the present book, creating a comprehensive work and an invaluable reference on the electrophysiological concepts underlying cellular...

The need for publishing acomprehensive review ofa number ofdifferent membrane pathologiesofmuscleand non-musclecells inillnesses ranging from diabetes toheart disease and cancer lies on to the fact that there are several books dealing with the properties ofnormal cell membranes, although there are very few books focussing on the abnormal membrane behavior. Since the membrane is the critical outer barrier of a cell, this membrane could be the first structure to be affected in some diseases. Research is advancing at the cellular level at a very rapid rate. We can now address questions such as:...

The publication embodied here represents the life work of a premier Russian scientist studying Sudden Cardiac Death. As one can gather from more than 35 first authored publications cited in the References, Dr. Rajskina has been involved with the investigation of mechanisms responsible for Sudden Cardiac Death for over 30 years. She has brought a classical approach to the sub ject, considering the effects of blood supply disturbances, electrophysiological changes that occur after regional ischemia, metabolic alterations, and the role of the autonomic nervous system in modulating these changes....

Following many years when a great deal of attention was directed towards the intracellular roles of purines, there is expanding interest in the field of extracellular purinergic signalling. In this book we focus on the actions of purines in cardiovascular biology, where it is clear that they play major roles in both normal and pathophysiological conditions. Activation of different purinoceptor subtypes by purines can regulate cardiac contractility and electrical activity, modulate catecholamine-mediated responses both pre- and post-junctionally, trigger and mediate ischaemic preconditioning,...

The first observations on heat shock proteins and the heart were made in the 1980s, and interest in these proteins has increased over the decade. In the last few years there has been an exponential growth in the number of papers published on heat shock proteins and the heart. Heat shock proteins have been implicated in a number of cardiovascular research areas including ischemia, hypertrophy, aging, and atherosclerosis, and this list is growing. The purpose of Heat Shock Proteins and the Cardiovascular System is to give an overview of our current understanding of the heat shock proteins in...

by JULIEN IE HOFFMAN One of the earliest coronary physiologists was Scaramucci who, in 1695, postu lated that during systole the contracting myocardium inhibited coronary blood flow. Since then, the many contributions that have been made to our knowledge of the coronary circulation can be arbitrarily divided into three phases based on advances in technical methods. The early phase of research into the coronary circulation, done with great difficulty with crude methods, may be regarded as ending in the 1940s, and it included major discoveries made by such well known investigators as Georg von...

Developments in the electrical treatment of arrhythmias have been so fast over the last few years that access to available, state-of-the-art knowledge has become a major challenge. The proceedings of scientific meetings are therefore most helpful in this regard.
This volume provides highlights of many of the recent and most important technological advances and concepts in cardiac electrotherapy, written by the most prominent figures in the field, for the internists, clinical cardiologists and cardiologists who are practising in arrhythmias and antiarrhythmic therapy.
The book is...

Cardiovascular diseases account for about half of total mortality in industrialised societies. This figure has declined only slightly and in few countries over the past few decades, which is disturbing in view of our increasing insight into long-term risk factors of coronary heart disease and the dramatic improvement in the acute therapy of its manifestations. One important reason for this is the high fatality during the initial hours of a coronary event, i.e. before medical treatment can be provided. Approximately one quarter of all patients suffering an acute cardiac event die prior to...

Despite approximately 50 years of progress in the management of com- plex congenital heart disease, hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) has been one of the last cardiac malformations to yield to effective surgical treat- ment. The surgical therapies for hypoplastic left heart syndrome have evolved by two quite disparate routes. One approach has been the staged reconstruc- tion operations utilizing an initial operation pioneered by many but developed by Dr. William Norwood and subsequently modified by many other investigators. The first stage reconstruction operation has been refined and...