This issue of CRM features a selection of accepted abstracts from Cardiovascular Revascularization Therapies (CRT) 2006 held April 3–6 in Crystal City, VA, USA. Considered the meeting's “best” abstracts, they were selected by expert reviewers from several different disciplinaries. This year's meeting was the largest in CRT's history—12 concurrent scientific sessions with 1300 attendees. All related to interventional cardiology, course content included cell therapy and angiomyogenesis, vulnerable plaque, acute coronary syndromes, acute myocardial infarction intervention, and complex coronary and peripheral intervention, including carotid stenting and chronic limb ischemia management. We also presented a 2-day “think tank” with the FDA in which regulatory issues related to interventional cardiology were discussed. Future devices were presented in an emerging technology forum, and our nurse and technician symposium included a comprehensive review of the field from the cath lab perspective.
I attribute the meeting's success to the contributions made by our outstanding, 230 world-renowned faculty and the excellent array of cardiovascular topics. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who participated in this year's meeting. The CRT meeting is now an official sponsor of CRM and we can look forward to more collaboration among all three media outlets: the CRM journal; the CRT meeting; and our Website, http://www.crtonline.org, which will also present CRT abstracts.
Three clinical original articles appear in this issue. The first, by Nishio et al., aimed to examine the effects of insulin resistance and its linkage to late loss with bare metal stenting in nondiabetic patients with acute myocardial infarction. In the next submission, Elian et al. aimed to assess the efficacy and safety of a thrombin-containing bandage for local hemostasis after femoral sheath removal in patients undergoing diagnostic cardiac catheterization. And in their article, Hassapoyannes et al. assessed for racial differences in the utilization of diverse cardiac diagnostic procedures for risk assessment and optimization.
In our physics original article, Dilcher et al. report outcome-related dose calculations for twice-radiated coronary artery segments, which may be relevant for patients who present with restenosis following treatment with radiation. Data showed that repeat radiation is a viable and safe option for this population. The manuscript also deals with the dosimetry challenges of this approach. The good news is that vascular brachytherapy remains an option for those patients in need and for patients who present with in-stent restenosis of drug-eluting stents. We hope that the continued use of this technology will be accompanied by more data we look forward to presenting in our journal.
In a case report from Germing et al., the authors demonstrate the impact of intracoronary thrombi on repetitive myocardial ischemia and the effectiveness of a noninterventional pharmacological approach for the treatment of acute myocardial infarction due to intracoronary thrombus.
Our image of the issue depicts a unique image of a 76-year-old woman who underwent emergent coronary angiography for an inferolateral acute myocardial infarction.
The journal continues to grow in terms of quality and diversity of content, and we are proud to announce an increase in the overall number of pages per issue. I hope this issue's content is of interest to readers; and please remember to view upcoming issues in which full-length articles of the current abstracts will be presented.
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