Treatment of refractory heart failure with a percutaneous circulatory support device.

End-stage heart failure refractory to medical therapy is a clinical challenge. Heart transplantation is considered the best strategy, but it remains burdened with substantial limitations due to the scanty availability of facilities with a transplant programme, donor shortage, and unpredictable waiting lists. Alternatively, assist devices may allow an improvement of the haemodynamic conditions, modifying the history of end-stage heart failure and introducing new management strategies.

[Enoximone in the treatment of postoperative low cardiac output syndrome in pediatric heart surgery. Open study in tetralogy of Fallot].

Objective: To evaluate the role of the phosphodiesterase inhibitor enoximone in low output states (LOS) following cardiac operations in congenital heart diseases.

Design: This was an unblinded, retrospective, open study. Hemodynamic effects of intravenous enoximone were investigated in 130 patients--70 adults and 60 pediatrics--offered to our Department from 1992 to 1995.

[The ergometric test after a heart transplant: its usefulness and limits].

Aim of this study was to analyze the cardiovascular response to graded physical exercise in patients who have undergone cardiac transplantation and to assess the ability of exercise stress testing in early detection of coronary artery disease. We studied 114 transplanted subjects (100 men and 14 women, mean age 46.6 +/- 11.

[Coronary disease of transplanted heart: prevalence, angiographic and etiopathogenetic aspects].

Progressive coronary artery disease is the most important factor influencing late mortality after heart transplantation. The aim of the study was to evaluate prevalence and clinical and angiographic findings of accelerated atherosclerosis in cardiac transplanted patients. During the first 5 years of the Heart Transplant Clinical Program at Policlinico S Matteo, Pavia, 81 patients underwent 156 coronary angiographies.