Editorial commentary: Trends in cardiovascular medicine From deep in the heart – An emerging role of cardiac lymphatics

Recent developments of new imaging techniques, such as lymphangiography, single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT)/lymphoscintigraphy and contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have enabled assessment of cardiac lymphatic function also in smaller experimental animals like rats and mice as well as in humans. [...]in dogs, the normal myocardium may increase its lymph flow six fold merely as a consequence of increased interstitial fluid pressure [3], suggesting that stimulating cardiac lymphangiogenesis might not be an effective strategy to improve cardiac lymphatic fluid drainage function. The observed beneficial effects of VEGF-C therapy, such as reduced inflammation, edema, fibrosis and cardiac dysfunction [5,13] may therefore be due not so much to fluid transport as to an effect on lymphatic and immune cell cross talk positively impacting cardiac repair after injury.