[Levosimendan: a new option in the pharmacologic management of cardiac insufficiency]

The congestive heart failure is a pathological process characterized by the incapacity of the heart to maintain an adequate cardiac perfusion for the tissue metabolism, and that can be secondary to diverse causes, that give as result, alterations in the lusitropism, inotropism or in the cronotropism. Over 4.6 persons per hundred in the United States alone carry this diagnosis, and it is the cause of death in several hundred thousand patients each year, with a 35% mortality over 5 years. In the last years, have existed important advances in the pharmacological treatment of this disease in it's terminal stages. The increase in the knowledge on the physiopathology of the heart failure, has taken place for the use of new schemes of treatment, where it excels the use of vasoactive amines, Angiotensin Converting Enzyme Inhibitors, angiotensin II receptor AT1 antagonists, etc; nevertheless we whereupon that most of these drugs that at the present display a favorable answer to the disease, has the disadvantage of increasing the consumption of oxygen by the own myocardium tissue. Levosimendan has a better profile of security than its predecessors (amrinone and milrinone), improves the haemodynamics parameters of special significant form in the cardiac output, the systolic pressure of the pulmonary artery and the telediastolic pressure of the left ventricle, without significantly increasing the consumption of oxygen by the myocardium. Levosimendan is a new and relevant calcium sensitizer developed for the short-term intravenous treatment of congestive heart failure.