This open access book presents a comprehensive overview of dilated cardiomyopathy, providing readers with practical guidelines for its clinical management. The first part of the book analyzes in detail the disease’s pathophysiology, its diagnostic work up as well as the prognostic stratification, and illustrates the role of genetics and gene-environment interaction. The second part presents current and future treatment options, highlighting the importance of long-term and individualized treatments and follow-up. Furthermore, it discusses open issues, such as the apparent healing phenomenon, the early prognosis of arrhythmic events or the use of genetic testing in clinical practice. Offering a multidisciplinary approach for optimizing the clinical management of DCM, this book is an invaluable aid not only for the clinical cardiologists, but for all physicians involved in the care of this challenging disease.

Evidence suggests that medical innovation is becoming increasingly dependent on interdisciplinary research and on the crossing of institutional boundaries. This volume focuses on the conditions governing the supply of new medical technologies and suggest that the boundaries between disciplines, institutions, and the private and public sectors have been redrawn and reshaped. Individual essays explore the nature, organization, and management of interdisciplinary R&D in medicine; the introduction into clinical practice of the laser, endoscopic innovations, cochlear implantation, cardiovascular imaging technologies, and synthetic insulin; the division of innovating labor in biotechnology; the government- industry-university interface; perspectives on industrial R&D management; and the growing intertwining of the public and proprietary in medical technology.

This book provides a state-of-the-art overview of the combined use of imaging modalities to obtain important functional and morphological information on intravascular disease and enhance disease detection. It discusses the integration of intravascular ultrasound (IVUS, intravascular optical coherence tomography (OCT), intravascular photoacoustic imaging (IVPA) and acoustic radiation force optical coherence elastography (ARF-OCE), and introduces the integration of multimodality imaging systems, such as IR and florescence. It includes the latest research advances and numerous imaging photos to offer readers insights into current intravascular applications. It is a valuable resource for students, scientists and physicians wanting to gain a deeper understanding of multimodality imaging tools.

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.

A practical guide to performing and analysing cardiovascular scans, this handbook is fully updated in this second edition. Containing a wealth of example scan images and detailed guidance on techniques and interpretations, this book is an invaluable workstation resource.