This issue of Interventional Cardiology Review contains a particularly broad selection of acronyms: from OCT to LAAO via PFO, TAVI, COAPT and MITRA-FR.
Coronary papers are in the minority on this occasion, but the two papers cover three fundamental issues in the field of stent failure, bifurcation disease and intracoronary imaging. The management of stent failure by Nikhil Patel et al. is part one of a comprehensive mini-series.
The structural papers cover a wide variety of technologies. I must congratulate Joel Giblett et al. on the clarity of their paper on contemporary management of PFOs, while Philippe Garot et al. provide expert guidance in their article ‘Device-Related Thrombus After Left Atrial Appendage Closure’. Kimberly Atianzar et al. talk us through the enormous amount we have learnt from the near simultaneous publication of the two recent MitraClip papers, COAPT and MITRA-FR, with opposite outcomes.
As we start to use third- and fourth-generation transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) devices, vascular access complications become relatively more common and large bore closure devices are an area of increasing interest to TAVI operators. Maarten P van Wiechen et al. have provided an excellent review of techniques and devices available. Despite the sophistication of current TAVI prostheses, the management of pure aortic regurgitation remains difficult and Eduardo Arias et al. have comprehensively explored the issues that need to be addressed when considering transcatheter treatment of such patients. The role of cerebral protection in TAVI remains uncertain and, as such, the analysis of this issue by Michael Teitelbaum et al. is welcome.
The wide variety of devices and procedures discussed in the issue serve to emphasise the problems we are likely to encounter in future with funding and with lab space. In this context the paper by Didier Tchetche et al. on how to make the TAVI pathway more efficient, is important both in principle and in practice.