Emilio Vanoli – författare

This ambitious and comprehensive handbook represents an essential contribution to our current understanding of interactions between heart and brain, a research topic generating growing interest. Despite the increasing awareness that neural mechanisms are the primary cause of cardiac disease and its progression, therapy continues to focus on end-organ protection and does not approach the neural core of the problem. Growing public health problems such as heart failure are still treated with autonomic drugs that are 30-40 years old and simply act on cardiac receptors. However, it has now been shown that the progression of ischemic heart disease to heart failure is mainly due to abnormal central responses to incipient cardiac disease, with neural activation the primary cause rather than the consequence of cardiac remodeling.Written by leading international experts in their respective research areas, the book presents a variety of perspectives on the coretopic: from social and philosophical to gender-related aspects.It is designed for a broad readership and  includes dedicated sections for cardiologists, psychiatrists, neurologists and psychotherapists looking for a more insightful and targeted approach to neuro-cardiovascular disease.

This book describes the most recent insights into heart failure and the role played by autonomic nervous system pathophysiology in it, discussing the therapeutic implications. While current therapeutic approaches are able to control the effects of excessive adrenergic activation in heart failure syndrome, the underlying abnormalities of adrenergic control remain unaltered and can still cause progression to unmanageable end-stage heart failure. New therapeutic pathways are therefore being explored with a view to developing interventions that can directly modulate adrenergic over-activity and restore a more appropriate balance in neural control of the cardiovascular system. The book opens by examining current heart failure therapies. Advances in our understanding of autonomic regulation/dysregulation in heart failure are then discussed in detail, in the context of the search for more effective therapies. A concluding section addresses the role of autonomic nervous system denervation in heart failure. The authors are top scientists from leading research centers.