Article Outline

• Copyright

We are proud to have completed the journal's first year under its new title, Cardiovascular Revascularization Medicine. As promised, under the new format, we introduced manuscripts and reviews covering a wider variety of disciplines, whereas still providing the latest data on vascular brachytherapy, a field that still has a niche within cardiovascular intervention.

Three important Clinical Original articles make up our final issue of 2005. The first, by Haase et al., investigated the potential impact of the differences in effective radiation dose between two radiation systems on clinical and angiographic outcomes of intracoronary brachytherapy for the prevention of in-stent restenosis. Mosseri et al. studied the stenting outcomes in patients with different amounts of coronary calcification, whereas Kuchulakanti et al. compared bivalirudin with eptifibatide in patients with in-stent restenosis undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention and vascular brachytherapy.

This issue also boasts a Biology Original article from Samsamshariat and Movahed, in which they developed a safe and simple method for intubation in rats using a straight tip 0.035-in. guide wire and a small infantile laryngoscope, and a Physics Original article from Dilcher et al. in which they aimed to measure the radiation dose in coronary arteries during radiation treatment of adjacent arteries with beta and gamma emitters using a novel in vivo optical fiber dosimeter.

There are also two Case Reports. The first one, by Lee et al., describes a case of ascending aortic intramural hematoma after percutaneous coronary intervention of an anomalous right coronary artery. The second one, by Stinis et al., describes the first case of a type F dissection following percutaneous coronary intervention of the distal right coronary artery causing total vessel occlusion.

Our only Clinical Review, submitted by Barlis et al., aimed to compare the procedural and 18-month clinical outcomes in patients receiving sirolimus-eluting stents with vascular brachytherapy for the treatment of in-stent restenosis.

As for 2006 and beyond, we do anticipate publishing more studies related to drug-eluting stents. With the dissemination of this technology in the United States and Europe, we await manuscripts detailing experiences with drug-eluting stents for different indications and utilization comparisons vs. bare metal stents and bypass surgery.

The journal has become the official journal of the Cardiovascular Revascularization Therapies meeting held annually in Washington, DC. As always, we encourage our readers to drop us a line on topics they would like to see in the journal and can do so by sending them to Kathryn Coons, Managing Editor, at kathryn.coons@medstar.net. We hope our readers find this issue and past issues of the journal interesting and will continue supporting Cardiovascular Revascularization Medicine either by submitting manuscripts or simply by reading upcoming issues.