Clinical applications involve heart failure during the acute phase of myocardial infarction, with the possibility of reducing the degree and extent of the perinecrotic ischaemic zone of the infarction. Treatment of this type would seem also to be particularly valuable in the provisional management of acute or sub-acute regurgitating valvular lesions: mitral insufficiency and interventricular communication secondary to an acute infarction, mitral and/or aortic regurgitation due the endocarditis. Finally, the results of oral vasodilators in the context of chronic refractory heart failure would seem ot be encouraging in the short term but their influence on long term prognosis is not known.