On behalf of the co-editors and associate editors, I wish you a great 2006 –the second year of the journal. As this present issue is the fourth issue of the journal, as agreed, we will now submit the candidature of the journal to the regulatory department of PubMed (Index Medicus/MEDLINE database) which requested four published issues before accepting an application to their network. At this stage, the only thing we can do is to cross our fingers...
20 years of stenting
In this issue we start with a short series entitled “twenty year anniversary of the introduction of stenting”. We have invited four pioneers in interventional cardiology and two in peripheral interventions to relate their first experiences. It is delightful to read, in very different styles, the first two historical accounts of Jacques Puel and Ulrich Sigwart, the following issues will feature the accounts of, amongst others, Eduardo Sousa, Gary Roubin and Julio Palmaz.
Papers accompanied with moving images on the website
The present issue inaugurates a new form of reporting experiences, namely that two printed papers (Bellenger and Vaina) have accompanying AVI files on the website, so that they are extensively illustrated and enhanced with moving images.
Technical report, a new style
With the Viking device in issue three, we have started with a subsection dedicated to technical reports on new devices. In the present issue we have one from Laborde et al. on the Core Valve device and also one on the MyoCath delivery system. Incidentally both articles are accompanied by a paper. We hope this rubric will become one of the most popular in the journal; describing at length and in details new devices and technical developments. So far 25 companies, either small “starts-up” companies or multinational corporations, have been approached to participate.
As far as the core content is concerned, the left main papers remain a hot topic in this journal and yet again, we succeeded in including a first reporting trial or registry, this time the Deliver II study (n=1531).
In the upcoming issues we will start a new section entitled “how and why”, usually authored by two prominent experts, one concentrating on the tips and tricks, the other on the evidence based medicine in this field.
On behalf of the editors, I thank you for your continuing support and I look forward to seeing you at EuroPCR this coming May in Paris. I hope you enjoy reading this issue.
