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This 2nd edition has been extensively updated and provides comprehensive and current insight into congenital heart diseases, from embryonic development through to clinical features, including human genetics and our current knowledge of the underlying molecular pathways.The book is divided into three parts: an introduction to the development of the heart and its vessels, an overview of the molecular pathways affecting the development of various cardiovascular structures, and a main section focusing on the different types of structural and nonstructural congenital heart diseases, including their clinical features, underlying genetic alterations and insights from animal models and pathways. All chapters have been updated and new chapters added on state-of-the-art approaches including stem cells and organoids, cardiac metabolism, single cell transcriptomics and 3D reconstruction of human heart development. The clinical chapters have been extended and include new sections on diagnostic imaging techniques. Taken together, the book, written by and for clinicians and researchers, provides an integrated and up-to-date resource for all those who want to learn more about both the clinical aspects and the genetic and molecular basis of congenital heart disease.

Ischemic heart disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the developed world. The high metabolism and oxygen demand of the cardiac myocardium depends on both a high blood flow and a rich capillary density. For this reason, the growth of the coronary vasculature is vital, not only in early development, but also in the adult faced with various stresses. Novel technologies have enabled the discovery of the molecular mechanisms underlying the growth and assembly coronary vessels, and this volume covers the hierarchy of the coronary vasculature from its embryonic origins through its postnatal growth, adulthood, and senescence. Chapters address normal coronary development, coronary anomalies and their possible underlying developmental errors, coronary vessel adaptations to exercise training, aging, hypoxia, myocardial ischemia, and cardiac hypertrophy.This comprehensive overview of current research in coronary vessels and myocardial perfusion was written by Dr. Robert J. Tomanek, Emeritus Professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Iowa. The book reviews, discusses, and integrates findings from various areas of coronary vasculature research, and as a result, will be a valuable reference source for cardiovascular scientists and physicians for many years to come.

Nature is totally amoral! There are at least 3-4 million people in France alone who suffer from arterial hypertension, and whose cardiovascular system is submitted day and night to both a haemodynamic and hormonal stress. In all cases, the vasculature hypertrophies as does the myocardium. This growth process is obviously mainly detrimental at the outset since it lowers compliance of the arteries and makes them stiffer. In contrast, myocardial hypertrophy is initially beneficial since the growth process multiplies the number of contractile units and by so doing improves external work. In addition, according to Starling's law, wall stress is lowered. Growth factors playa major role in this amoral process as a trigger for hypertrophy at the vascular level, and very likely at the level of the myocardium. Another major point of interest is the role of growth factors as determinants of restenosis after angioplasty and also of atherogenesis. Several chapters in this book are directly or indirectly concerned with this problem which is far from being purely academic since several groups are currently trying to control these processes by gene transfer. Certainly, one of the major clinical questions arising from such studies is why restenosis is not more frequent in clinical practice. After de-endotheliazation, the biologist would predict on the basis of recent studies on growth factors, and in contrast with current clinical opinion, that hypertrophy would occur in all cases with more or less complete restenosis.

The progressive changes which occur during the life history of an individual metazoon are summed up under the term development. The adult multicellular organism differs from its early developmental stages by its size, shape, proportions, and by its parts having gradually acquired different structural and functional properties. Accordingly, several main processes involved in development, whose classification is a matter of convention, may be delimitated. Differentiation is considered one of the most important of them. In the broader sense of the word, the term differentiation is used for describing transformations, through which heterogeneity-at all levels (macroscopic, microscopic, submicroscopic)-arises or increases. The basic component of the wider phenomenon of differentiation is differentiation of cells, so-called cytodifferentiation. What is cytodifferentiation? In the course of ontogeny, the cells, starting with the fertilized ovum, via the blastomeres of the segmenting ovum and the germ layer cells, right to the differentiating and fully differentiated cells of tissues and organs, gradually acquire new properties which make them different both from a morphological and functional point of view. All changes involved in this process come under the term cytodifferentiation. Differentiation of cells (though not of all kinds of cells) continues throughout the entire life of the individual, but reaches its maximum at the embryonic period when it becomes the chief feature of development.

Radiation can only affect matter if absorbed by it. Within the broad range of 300-1000 nm, which we call'the visible', light quanta are energetic enough to produce excited electronic states in the atoms and molecules that absorb them. In these states the molecules may have quite different properties from those in their dormant condition, and reactions that would not otherwise occur become possible. About 80% of the radiant energy emitted by our sun lies in this fertile band, and so long as the sun's surface temperature is maintained at about 6000° C this state of affairs will continue. This and the transparency of our atmosphere and waters have allowed the generation and evolution of life. Before life began the atmosphere probably also transmitted much of the solar short-wave radiation, but with the rise of vegetation a new product - oxygen - appeared and this, by a photochemical reaction in the upper atmosphere, led to the ozone layer that now protects us from the energetic'short-wave'quanta that once, perhaps, took part in the generation of life-molecules. Light is an ideal sensory stimulus. It travels in straight lines at great speed and, consequently, can be made to form an image from which an animal can make'true', continuous and immediate assessments of present and impending events.

Catecholamines 1922 -1971 H. BLASCHKO Adrenaline and related substances were discussed in the 1924 edition of Hefl'ter's Handbook by PAUL TRENDELENBURG. On 164 pages he described what was then known not only of adrenaline and its closest relatives but also of the sympathomimetic compounds such as tyramine and ephedrine. When the present Editors of the Handbook entrusted us with the task of editing the present Volume it was decided to restrict it to adrenaline and the other naturally occurring catecholamines. The sympathomimetic amines in general will be discussed only in their relation to the catecholamines. Since TRENDELENBURG completed his review this field has undergone an enormous expansion. There has been a wealth of new findings, and a succession of new ideas. The new theories that have been built into contemporary thought will be fully discussed in the succeeding contributions. But many of the hypotheses that have been put forward since 1924 have long been discarded and yet, they have often led to important observations that we still consider as valid.