Effective new treatments of heart disease are based on a refined understanding of cellular function and the heart's response to environmental stresses. Not surprisingly therefore, the field of experimental cardiology has experienced a phase of rapid exponential growth during the last decade. The acquisition of new knowledge has been so fast that textbooks of cardiology or textbooks of cardiovascular physiology are often hard-pressed to keep up with the most important conceptual advances. Witness the explosive increase in knowledge about signaling pathways of cardiac growth, transcriptional regulation of cardiac metabolism, hormonal signaling, and the complex responses of the heart to ischemia, reperfusion, or ischemic preconditioning. This book is meant.
