Provisional stenting for multivessel PCI.

Background: Bare stents reduce acute complications and repeat revascularization following percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), but are costly and may lead to in-stent restenosis. It remains unclear whether stents should be universally implanted or whether provisional stenting mainly to suboptimal balloon dilatation results is an acceptable approach for multivessel PCI.

Objective: To compare the long-term clinical restenosis and target lesion revascularization (TLR) of stented and non-stented coronary artery lesions in patients who had multivessel PCI.

The opposing effects of endothelin-1 and C-type natriuretic peptide on apoptosis of neonatal rat cardiac myocytes.

C-type natriuretic peptide (CNP) and endothelin-1 are paracrine peptides with opposing effects on cardiac myocyte contraction and intracellular cGMP production. Elevated levels of both endothelin-1 and CNP are found in patients with congestive heart failure. These factors may be related to positive and negative regulation of cell apoptosis in the failing heart.

Cardiovascular effects of natriuretic peptides and their interrelation with endothelin-1.

The natriuretic peptides are a group of structurally related but genetically distinct peptides. Four types of natriuretic peptides have been found thus far: atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP), brain natriuretic peptide (BNP), C-type natriuretic peptide (CNP) and Dendroaspis natriuretic peptide (DNP). ANP and BNP are secreted mainly from the heart and function as hormones with vasodilatory and natriuretic effects.