The hypertrophy of the non-infarcted myocardium, which may not appear to be damaged at the time of the infarction, cannot compensate sufficiently to prevent the progression of heart failure, and this inability to compensate is identical to our findings, such as pulmonary congestion, right ventricular hypertrophy, overexpression of the heart failure indicators, ANP and BNP mRNA, and the depression of cardiac systolic and diastolic function (11,12). Here, NPPB is linked to heart failure.