Digitalis

Abstract

ALTHOUGH digitalis has been in clinical use for more than 200 years, not until the late 1920s was it clearly demonstrated that digitalis has a positive inotropic effect on the heart, enhancing the contractile state of the intact ventricle.¹ Nearly 60 more years passed before a consensus emerged about the underlying cellular mechanism whereby cardiac glycosides augment the force of contraction of the normal and failing heart. In this brief review, I shall summarize our current understanding of the basic mechanisms of the action of digitalis and offer a view of the appropriate place of cardiac glycosides in the contemporary . . .