Editorial Stem Cell Therapy. A New Perspective for the Treatment of Ischemic Heart Failure

Millions of people throughout the world have chronic heart failure, with ischemia being one of its most prevalent causes. It is a serious public health problem. The current treatments comple-mentary to the optimized clinical treatment, such as cardiomyo-plasty, heart transplantation, and different types of pacemakers, along with mechanical devices of ventricular support have not been established as standard procedures. Each of them has its own disadvantages, creating a field for study and application of alternative techniques. Of the latter, transplantation of exogenous stem cells to the impaired myocardium, aiming at improving cardiac performance, a process called cell cardiomyoplasty, seems to have a promising future 1-3. Stem cells constitute a population of immature tissue precursor cells capable of self-renewal and production or replacement of cells of many tissues 4. Different methods of treatment with stem cell