Which patients with ischaemic heart disease could benefit from cell replacement therapy?
Recently, cell replacement therapy has been investigated as a new tool in patients with ischaemic heart disease (IHD), who are prone to or with already established systolic dysfunction. Different subsets of stem cells have been used for preventive as well as curative purposes. Although cardiac cell transplantation and cytokine mobilization originally began in clinical trials with the explicit goal of myocardial regeneration, more recently, the emphasis has been focused on remodelling attenuation capacities of this approach. Left ventricular (LV) remodelling is a complex process involving changes in size, shape, and function of the LV, which plays an important role in the development of chronic heart failure after acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Recently, several studies have improved our knowledge about prevalence, clinical importance, and methods predicting the occurrence of LV remodelling after AMI. In patients with established LV remodelling, the place of cell replacement therapy
