Cardiomyoplasty is a surgical procedure in which healthy muscle from another part of the body is wrapped around the heart to provide support for the failing heart.^[1] Most often the latissimus dorsi muscle is used for this purpose. A special pacemaker is implanted to make the skeletal muscle contract. If cardiomyoplasty is successful and increased cardiac output is achieved, it usually acts as a bridging therapy, giving time for damaged myocardium to be treated in other ways, such as remodeling by cellular therapies

CELLULAR CARDIOMYOPLASTY

Cellular cardiomyoplasty is a method which augments myocardial function and cardiac output by directly growing new muscle cells in the damaged myocardium (heart muscle). Tissue engineering, which is now being categorized as a form of regenerative medicine, can be defined as biomedical engineering to reconstruct, repair, and improve biological tissues. Research efforts in tissue engineering have been ongoing and it is emerging as one of the key areas of medical research. Furthermore, there are vast developments in tissue engineering, which involve leveraging of technologies from biomaterials, molecular medicine, biochemistry, nanotechnology, genetic and biomedical engineering for regeneration and cell expansion targets to restructure and/or repair human organs. Injection of cardiomyogenic and/or angiogenic stem cells have been proposed as alternatives to existing treatments. For cardiovascular application, skeletal myoblasts are of great interest as they can be easily isolated and are associated with high proliferation rate. These cells have also been demonstrated to be hypoxia-resistant.

Bone marrow contains different cell populations, which exhibit excellent plasticity toward cardiogenic and endothelial cells. These cell populations are endothelial progenitor cells, hematopoietic stem cells and mesenchymal stem cells. Adipose tissue host progenitor cells with reported interesting cardiomyogenic and vasculogenic potential in the sense that they improve heart functions and reduce infarction size in rodent animal models. Subcutaneous adipose tissue is also a source of mesenchymal stem cells and have demonstrated positive outcomes in terms of cardiovascular tissue remodeling. Mammal hearts also host naturally occurring cardiac stem cells which may be capable of differentiating themselves into cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells and cardiac fibroblasts.This self-regeneration capacity gives rise to alternatives to classical cellular therapies whereby administration of growth factors such as Thymosin β4 for cell activation and migration are solely necessary. Largely democratized in terms of population information, embryonic stem cells are known for their strong capacity for expansion and differentiation into cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells and cardiac fibroblasts.