Helium-induced cardioprotection: in sickness and in health, for better or for worse?

In this thesis, three main research questions have been addressed and answered. Firstly we showed that hypoxia induces late preconditioning in vivo (chapter 3). Secondly we proved that helium induces pre- and postconditioning (chapter 4-7). Because of clinical applicability we focused on helium postconditioning and found that application of a 15-minute episode of helium seems to be the most protective stimulus (chapter 4). We investigated the influence of helium conditioning on various aspects and constituents of reperfusion injury and pathways (chapter 4-8). Thirdly we showed that a combination of various helium conditioning stimuli protects the diseased myocardium against ischemia/reperfusion injury (chapter 7).