The Role Of Sex In Heart Failure And Transplantation Volume Ii

This book gathers together contributions from internationally renowned authors in the field of cardiovascular systems and provides crucial insight into the importance of sex- and gender-concepts during the analysis of patient data. This innovative title is the first to offer the elements necessary to consider sex-related properties in both clinical and basic studies regarding the heart and circulation on multiscale levels (i.e. molecular, cellular, electrophysiologically, neuroendocrine, immunoregulatory, organ, allometric, and modeling). Observed differences at (ultra)cellular and organ level are quantified, with focus on clinical relevance and implications for diagnosis and patient management. Since the cardiovascular system is of vital importance for all tissues, Sex-Specific Analysis of Cardiovascular Function is an essential source of information for clinicians, biologists, and biomedical investigators. The wide spectrum of differences described in this book will also act as an eye-opener and serve as a handbook for students, teachers, scientists and practitioners.

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of mortality in men and women. Unfortunately, women have traditionally been excluded from clinical trials, and female animals have been used less or sex was not reported in basic research studies. Until recently, consideration of both sexes was not required in clinical and preclinical studies focusing on cardiovascular diseases. However, the number of clinical and experimental papers dealing with sex differences and heart disease significantly increases during the last years. This trend is obviously the result of at least two facts: the number of examples of different behavior of the male and female heart under physiological and pathological conditions is steadily increasing and there were controversial reports on the beneficial and adverse effect of hormonal replacement therapy. Detailed molecular and cellular mechanisms of these differences are still unknown but one is clear already today: sex differences are so important that they should be considered by the selection of optimum diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in clinical practice. The book presents 16 manuscripts on sex differences of heart disease, as developed by several investigators; the volume is organized in four parts. Part I, dealing with sex differences in cardiac ischemic injury, includes 5 chapters on experimental aspects of cardiac ischemia/reperfusion injury, the role of testosterone, and clinical aspects of ischemic heart disease. Part II is devoted to sex differences in heart failure and includes four chapters. Discussion in this part of the book is centered around the sex differences in heart failure due to volume overload. Part III of this volume includes four papers on risk factors of cardiovascular diseases, namely hypertension and obesity, and, finally, three chapters in part IV deal with sex differences of cardiac mitochondria under different pathological conditions. We believe this book will be very useful for cardiovascular scientists, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and other health professionals.

For many years, there has been a great deal of work done on chronic congestive heart failure while acute heart failure has been considered a difficult to handle and hopeless syndrome. However, in recent years acute heart failure has become a growing area of study and this is the first book to cover extensively the diagnosis and management of this complex condition. The book reflects the considerable amounts of new data reported and many new concepts which have been proposed in the last 3-4 years looking at the epidemiology, diagnostic and treatment of acute heart failure.

Although the majority of heart failure represents the exacerbation of chronic disease, about 20% will present as a first time diagnosis. And although there are a number of intravenous agents that can be used for acute decompensated heart failure, there are no national guidelines currently available. Edited by a well-known expert and his team of con