Moving preconditioning from bench to bedside.

schemic preconditioning is the one maneuver that has onsistently been shown to reduce myocardial necrosis due o ischemia/reperfusion injury in experimental models (1). rief coronary occlusions of a few minutes to 10 min ollowed by brief reperfusion periods markedly reduce the ize of a subsequent myocardial infarction (MI) induced by longer coronary artery occlusion followed by reperfusion. he ability of ischemic preconditioning to reduce myocarial infarct size has been observed in every species in which he phenomenon has been tested. Ischemic preconditioning lso confers other benefits, including a reduction in lethal entricular arrhythmias (2). There is now ample evidence hat ischemic preconditioning can occur in the human heart 3). Studies of isolated cardiac myocytes and human cardiac uscle have shown that, in in vitro models that simulate schemia/reperfusion, preconditioning protocols can protect he compromised heart tissue. During sequential percuta-