BACKGROUND Myocardial hibernation and stunning are characterised by a reversible contractile dysfunction during and after ischaemia, respectively. Calcium homeostasis might be disturbed in hibernation and stunning due to altered expression of cardiac proteins involved in calcium handling. METHODS In enflurane-anaesthetised swine the coronary blood flow through the left anterior descending cor...

Stress-induced cardiomyopathy (also called Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, apical ballooning, or broken heart syndrome) was first reported in 1991 as “myocardial stunning due to simultaneous multivessel coronary spasms: a review of 5 cases” by Japanese doctors, and is well known disease entity now. This disease primarily affects postmenopausal women after psychological or physical stress. Clinical ch...

OBJECTIVES We assessed the effect of milrinone application timing after reperfusion against myocardial stunning as compared with levosimendan in swine. Furthermore, we examined the role of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (p38 MAPK) in the milrinone-induced cardioprotection. DESIGN All swine were subjected to 12-minutes ischemia followed by 90-minutes reperfusion to generate stunned myoca...

This study was performed to investigate the relationship between the cyclic variation of integrated backscatter and myocardial wall thickening in stunned myocardium. Different definitions of cyclic variation were evaluated to be able to compare with other studies. Ultrasound data were acquired from 10 open-chested Yorkshire pigs (25-33 kg) at baseline, during regional ischemia and during 30 min...

BACKGROUND The phenomenon of reversible impairment in LV function has been well described and is known as myocardial stunning. OBJECTIVE Thallium-201 myocardial perfusion gated SPECT was used to evaluate myocardial stunning and its incremental prognostic value in patients with coronary artery disease. PATIENTS AND METHODS Fifty-six patients (aged 63+/-11 years) with coronary artery disease ...

Reperfusion is mandatory to salvage ischemic myocardium from impending infarction. However, reperfusion also causes additional irreversible injury, not only to the myocardium, but also to the coronary microcirculation. Such reperfusion injury is the target of cardioprotective conditioning strategies. Such strategies include brief cycles of ischemia/reperfusion before (preconditioning), during (...

A pathogenetic role of OH in myocardial stunning has been inferred from the protective effects of OH scavengers and iron chelators. However, conclusive demonstration of the OH radical hypothesis of myocardial stunning requires direct verification of three major, but still unproven, assumptions: (1) OH is produced in the stunned myocardium in vivo; (2) antioxidant therapy inhibits OH production;...