In this month's edition of The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Yerebakan and colleagues1 present their work studying the effects of central pulmonary artery banding on doxorubicin-induced left ventricular (LV) cardiomyopathy in juvenile animals. Their group used selective left main intracoronary injections of doxorubicin in 4-month-old sheep to induce LV dilation and impairment and then subjected the animals to either central pulmonary artery banding (CPAB) or a sham operation. Echocardiography conducted before the animals were killed and the hearts explanted demonstrated that CPAB improved the LV function and reduced the LV dimensions without an effect on the pressure-volume loop assessments.
