Human myocardium preconditioning during successive balloon inflations: irrelevant influence of both collateral recruitment and clinical pre-intervention interference.

Aims: We hypothesised that ischaemic preconditioning (IP) results from complex cellular mechanisms without significant collateral recruitment or clinical pre-intervention interference.

Methods And Results: A total of 58 patients underwent three 2-min balloon inflations separated by 5-min reperfusions. Anginal symptoms were graded according to this scale: 0 = absent, 1 = mild, 2 = moderate and 3 = severe.