The last three decades of the 20th century saw impressive progress in the field of pathogenesis, prevention and therapy of ischemic heart disease which resulted in a marked decline in mortality in the Western World. However, the incidence of this devastating disease is on the rise in developing countries. This volume is organized into two sections: pathophysiologic mechanisms of ischemia-reperfusion injury; and preconditioning and protection of ischemia-reperfusion injury it contains late-1990s information concerning the current concepts of ischemia-reperfusion injury, the sequence of events resulting in the loss of contractile dysfunction, and mechanisms of cardioprotection by several drugs as well as the role of ischemic preconditioning in attenuating problems associated with ischemia-reperfusion injury.