Advances in Myocardiology: Volume 4

This volume of Advances in Myocardiology is derived from a part of the proceedings of the 10th Congress of the International Society for Heart Research, which was held in Moscow on September 23-29, 1980. This book contains selected papers which have been arranged in two sections, Cardiac Hypertrophy, Adaptation, and Pathophysiology and Cardiac Hypoxia, Is- chemia, and Infarction. The first section, on the pathophysiology of heart hypertrophy and failure, contains 24 chapters that focus on the derangement of biochemical, physiological, and immunological processes during the de- velopment of heart disease due to a wide variety of pathogenic factors. Some of the recent developments in understanding the myocardial synthetic ma- chinery in heart hypertrophy are also described in these papers, and we believe that the contents of this section will stimulate further research in the area of heart disease. The second section, which mainly deals with myocardial ischemia, contains 35 chapters providing the necessary back- ground for the diagnosis of ischemic heart disease and some possible ther- apeutic approaches. It hardly needs to be emphasized that ischemic heart disease is a major cause of death in highly industrialized countries, but unfortunately the exact mechanism by which ischemic insult leads to the development of heart cell damage is far from understood. We are hopeful that the articles in this section will provide valuable information in this field and thus will help in improving the treatment of ischemic heart disease.