Collateral Circulation of the Heart
Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in industrialized countries. Established options for revascularization include angioplasty and surgical bypass, both of which are unsuitable in 20–30% of patients in whom the extent of coronary athero
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Christian Seiler
Collateral Circulation of the Heart
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Christian Seiler Universita¨tsspital Klinik und Poliklinik fu¨r Kardiologie Freiburgstrasse 4 3010 Bern Switzerland [email protected]
ISBN 978-1-84882-341-9 e-ISBN 978-1-84882-342-6 DOI 10.1007/978-1-84882-342-6 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2009921187 # Springer-Verlag London Limited 2009 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licenses issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. The use of registered names, trademarks, etc., in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Product liability: The publisher can give no guarantee for information about drug dosage and application thereof contained in this book. In every individual case the respective user must check its accuracy by consulting other pharmaceutical literature. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer ScienceþBusiness Media (www.springer.com)
Dedicated to Ladina, Luzi, Fia Rageth, Men Maria, my children and to Christina
Preface
The sober explanation for this book is a call by the Springer-Verlag, London, to edit a publication on ‘The functional relevance of the collateral circulation’ of the heart. Alternatively, it could be ‘sold’ as the result of my intention to reduce entropy of 18 years of scientific work on the topic of the coronary circulation, which was itself meant to diminish the amount of ‘useless’ energy. Such a process of reducing disarray in a system with the aim of grasping it better is related to simplification, which carries the risk of introducing error. This can be exemplified by the historic view of angina pectoris, which used to be simplified as being always fatal, thus obscuring for nearly two centuries the view of a ‘self-healing’ mechanism such as the collateral circulation of the heart. It would be naı¨ ve, to assume the present work to be free of erroneous oversimplification, because the very nature of scientific work is related to generating (simple) hypotheses with their subsequent falsification. In that context and bluntly, my primary interest in the field of the collateral circulation was not initiated with a vision of eradicating the consequences of coronary artery disease (CAD) by promoting the growth of natural bypasses. The time for such sizeable ideas had passed in the 1970s with the start of the work by Wo
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