Autori: D Vinereanu, M Diena, D Benea, G Cerin, M Cinteza, M Florescu

Editorial: Maedica - a Journal of Clinical Medicine, 5, 2008.

Rezumat:

Left ventricular (LV) remodeling following a myocardial infarction (MI) is a pathologically process of change in size, shape and volumes, wall thickness and function of the heart. Remodeling changes begin in the acute period of MI and tend to continue long after that, leading to LV dysfunction and severe heart failure in late phases. Therefore, early diagnosis of the LV remodeling is of a major importance, both for assessing the cardiovascular prognostic and for deciding the optimal management of the patients with cardiac dilatation. In the last decade, we have witnessed an extraordinary development of imaging techniques, which are able to make an accurate diagnosis of LV remodeling. Echocardiography is a rapid, feasible and simple non-invasive imagistic met hod, and thus represents the preferred imagistic tool for quantify the cardiac dilatation and its functional consequences. Medical treatment has been found to be ineffective for decrease the cardiac remodeling following a MI. In such cases, complex surgical procedure – coronary revascularization, ventricular restoration and mitral valve repair – represent time preferred therapeutically options. Thesefacts require a close collaboration between the echocardiographer and the surgeon to improve the outcome of patients who have ischemic cardiac remodeling

Cuvinte cheie: left ventricular remodeling, cardiac surgery