The key aim of this journal is to provide up to date and detailed review of data relating to problems commonly encountered by cardiologists. This issue of Interventional Cardiology Review deals with a wide spectrum of such problems.
There are four articles that relate to our concerns about thrombus and bleeding in the context of coronary intervention. The effect of bleeding on outcomes following coronary intervention is reviewed by Holroyd et al. Coronary intervention in patients who require oral anticoagulation is reviewed by Gallagher et al. There are two papers in this group that relate to this issue in the context of primary angioplasty: Kandan et al review antiplatelet agents in this setting while Tsang et al review the pharmacological and mechanical management of thrombus in STEMI.
Wald et al also provide a paper on primary angioplasty, explaining the importance of randomized trials to assess different treatment strategies. A paper by Ouweneel et al reviews haemodynamic support not only in primary angioplasty but in all high risk coronary interventions.
Finally, a paper in the coronary section by Rathod et al compares the attributes and applications of the two available methods for the imaging of coronary arteries - intravascular ultrasound and optical coherence tomography.
The structural section includes two papers on TAVI, one on patent foramen ovale and a final paper on the surgical treatment of tricuspid regurgitation. Eggebrecht et al review emergency cardiac surgery in TAVI and this is of particular interest at a time when we are anticipating one year outcomes following TAVI in intermediate risk patients. Spina et al review the growing field of TAVI as a treatment strategy for aortic regurgitation.
The value of percutaneous closure of PFOs have been questioned by several papers over the last few years and Stortecky et al provide a detailed review that keeps us up to date with randomized trials in this field.
Tricuspid regurgitation is a valve lesion encountered, in varying degrees of severity, on a daily basis by interventional cardiologists. Topilsky provides an excellent review of indications for surgical treatment.