Myocardial recovery during mechanical circulatory support: cellular, molecular, genomic and organ levels

Mechanical circulatory support is a life-saving therapy that will become either a bridge-to-transplantation or definitive therapy if heart transplantation is not possible. Failing hearts supported by a ventricular assist device were often found to recover at molecular and cellular level but translation of these changes into functionally-stable cardiac recovery allowing long-term heart transplantation/ventricular assist device-free outcomes after weaning from ventricular assist device is relatively rare and related to the etiology, severity and duration of myocardial damage. The reason for the discrepancy between high recovery rates on the cellular and molecular levels and the low rate of cardiac recovery allowing ventricular assist device explantation is unknown.