ICR - Volume 9 Issue 3 Autumn 2014

Foreword

This year’s third and final issue of Interventional Cardiology Review includes an excellent series of papers on chronic total occlusions. Over the last 10 years, particularly the last 5 years, this area has been transformed by the introduction of new technologies and new techniques. Cases which would only have been considered for surgical revascularisation a decade ago are now routinely being performed percutaneously with success rates approaching 90 %. There are papers by Carlo Di Mario, Nick Curzen and an internationally recognized predominantly American group led by Emmanouil Brilakis. These papers provide concise descriptions of the new techniques and technologies as well reviewing clinical and health economic outcomes of contemporary CTO procedure. This focus on CTO interventions has, unusually, left no room for structural intervention papers but there are five high quality papers reviewing other areas of coronary intervention.

There are two detailed papers on IVUS by Jasvindar Singh and Andrejs Erglis. These papers review the different IVUS technologies, their practical applications and a wealth of research data relating to them. In contrast, Demosthenes Katritsis provides an introduction to the non-invasive assessment of coronary artery stenoses by computational flow dynamics.

Cindy Grines and Christian Hamm provide insightful reviews of bioresorbable scaffolds and novel antiplatelet agents respectively – both areas of where important developments are increasing the safety and efficacy of percutaneous coronary intervention.

Finally, I would like to welcome Tim Kinnaird and Darren Mylotte. They have a wealth of experience from working in cardiac units in both North America and Europe. Tim and Darren have taken on editorship of the coronary and structural intervention sections respectively. I am sure we will work well together and what looks to be an excellent first issue for 2015 is already taking shape.

Simon Kennon - Editor-in-Chief (ICR)