**1. Introduction**

The prognosis of patients suffering from acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is directly related to the amount of muscle loss and the deterioration of ventricular function caused by the event [1–4]. Consequently, the goal of treatment in the initial phase, beyond preserving life, is to limit myocardial damage. Early reperfusion of the myocardium limits the size of the infarction and improves the prognosis of patients [3, 4]. Primary angioplasty is the most effective reperfusion strategy for the treatment of acute myocardial infarction [5–7]. From the first reports of mechanical reperfusion to the present, the primary angioplasty strategy continuously improved in different aspects such as greater accessibility to the method [8–10], safer vascular accesses [11, 12], and the use of drug-eluting stents that modulate the scarring of the coronary artery wall [13, 14] to prevent restenosis of the vessel or vessels treated. In addition, the development of antithrombotic and antiplatelet drugs also

contributed to improving early and late artery permeability [15, 16]. The enormous effort focused on the treatment of the coronary artery has led to the fact that the success of primary angioplasty is now greater than 95% [7]. The angiographic success rate ceased to be a problem. However, the post-AMI incidence of death and heart failure remains around 20% during the first year [17], and as mentioned earlier this correlates directly with the amount of myocardium damaged and the deterioration of ventricular function.
