Fredholm M, et al. - Researchers performed this randomized, blinded study to compare two inodilators, milrinone and levosimendan, with respect to their direct inotropic and lusitropic impacts in patients after aortic valve replacement for aortic stenosis. They focused on the impacts on LV performance, LV strain, systolic and early diastolic strain rate among patients with normal LV function, who were randomized to either levosimendan (0.1 and 0.2 μg/kg/min) or milrinone (0.4 and 0.8 μg/kg/min) post-procedure. They found that both milrinone and levosimendan had comparable direct inotropic and lusitropic effects at clinically relevant infusion rates and a certain increase in LV performance.