Editor`s Message - March 2009

Dear Readers, The March 2009 issue of the Journal of Invasive Cardiology coincides with the 58th Annual Scientific Sessions of the American College of Cardiology and includes original research articles, commentaries and case reports with interesting clinical images. It also features the first part of a special section focusing on the use of adjunctive pharmacotherapy to improve the outcomes of percutaneous coronary intervention. The guest editor for this special section is Dr. Dean Kereiakes from The Carl and Edyth Lindner Center for Research and Education at the Christ Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. Dr. Kereiakes has provided an editorial to introduce the section and a summary of the articles that are featured this month. Be sure to read the articles published online this month, which include case reports highlighting the nonsurgical closure of recurrent rupture of a sinus of Valsalva aneurysm in the presence of an aortic prosthesis; treatment decision-making in the setting of spontaneous coronary artery dissection; approaches to the treatment of a septal infarction and complete heart block following coronary intervention of the left anterior descending coronary artery; the successful treatment of severe regurgitation of a stentless aortic valve prosthesis with a self-expandable biological valve; and use of the in-situ wire technique to close a coronary artery fistula. These selections can be found on our website and I encourage you to visit www.invasivecardiology.com to read these interesting and informative articles, as well as any past issues of the journal in the archives section that you may have missed. The original research articles contained in this issue of the journal cover a variety of clinical topics. In the first original research article, Dr. Gabriele Pesarini and collaborators from the Department of Biomedical Sciences and Surgery of the Universita di Verona, the European Hospital in Rome, Ospedale Santo Spirito, Pescara, Policlinico San Marco, Zingonia, the Universita di Catania, Ospedale Ferrarotto, Catania and the Universita di Napoli, Poloclinico Federico II in Naples, Italy, present the angiographic results of their multicenter DESIRE study (Dexamethasone-Eluting Stent Italian Registry) investigating this steroid-eluting stent in patients with acute coronary syndromes. Next, Dr. Corrado Tamburino and colleagues from the Department of Cardiovascular Diseases at the Ferrarotto Hospital in Catania, Italy, report on their research examining procedural success and 30-day clinical outcomes after percutaneous aortic valve replacement using the current third-generation self-expanding CoreValve prosthesis. To accompany the Tamburino et al article, Dr. Peter Block from the editorial board comments on how there is still much to learn about transcatheter aortic valve replacement. In the next research article, Dr. Samir Pancholy from the Department of Cardiology at Mercy Hospital and Community Medical Center in Scranton, Pennsylvania, reports on the impact of two different hemostatic devices on radial artery outcomes after transradial catheterization. And in the last original research article, Dr. Chadwick Huggins and colleagues from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, present their prospective, randomized clinical trial on the use of fluoroscopy in obtaining femoral arterial access, finding that this imaging modality did not increase the probability of arterial puncture over the femoral head or the rate of successful common femoral artery cannulation. This issue is completed with two clinical image selections. The first of these, submitted by Drs. Jan Belohlavek, Stanislav Beran and Ales Linhart from the Department of Internal Medicine II, Cardiology and Angiology, General Teaching Hospital, Charles University Prague in the Czech Republic, presents an unusual case of critical ostial celiac trunk stenosis presenting as abdominal angina during a massive pulmonary embolism with cardiogenic shock. In the second selection, Dr. Clare Appleby and colleagues from the Peer Munk Cardiac Center at Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network in Toronto, Canada, present a case with a calcified neointimal that appeared as a “stent-within-a-stent”. I hope that these interesting articles and the special section focusing on the use of adjunctive pharmacotherapy to improve PCI outcomes in this issue of the journal will provide timely information to healthcare professionals so that they are able to provide state-of-the-art treatment for their cardiovascular disease patients.