The Right Ventricle in Health and Disease provides a comprehensive and up-to-date database and collection of the available information which describes the structure and function of the normal right ventricle. The right ventricular performance and function reserve has now finally moved to the center of the stage as clinicians recognize that the drugs presently used to treat patients with severe pulmonary hypertension do not necessarily improve the performance of the right ventricle and because the survival depends on the right ventricular function that treatment strategies need to be developed to primarily protect the right ventricle from failing. In-depth chapters discuss right heart function and failure in patients with congenital heart diseases, review modern imaging techniques used to describe right ventricular form and function in patients with right heart failure (including cardiac MRI and PET scanning), describe ventricular interdependence: the left ventricle in pulmonary hypertension and discuss the concept of the sick lung circulation and its contribution to right heart failure. Treatment strategies of chronic right heart failure including drugs and mechanical devices are also discussed.
