Journal of Invasive Cardiology

This issue of the Journal of Invasive Cardiology includes original research articles, a Rapid Communication selection, as well as the third update of The CATH (Cardiac Catheterization and Antithrombotic Therapy in the Hospital) Clinical Consensus Panel Report to help clinicians incorporate the 2007 ACC/AHA Guidelines into their treatment protocol. Also, please visit our digital issue to view this month’s case reports and an index to all articles published during 2007 in the Journal (www.invasivecardiology.com).
The first two research articles, both from the Cardiovascular Research Institute/Medstar Research Institute at Washington Hospital Center, Washington, D.C., and the Cardiovascular Research Foundation in New York, employ intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) as a tool to explore the treatment issues around left main coronary artery disease (CAD) and in-stent restenosis (ISR). The first, submitted by Young Joon Hong and associates, describes the impact of remodeling on cardiac events in patients with angiographically mild left main CAD. Using IVUS, the authors found that angiographically mild left main disease was more frequently associated with negative remodeling, and negative remodeling was associated with fewer left main artery-related cardiac events. In the second article, Dr. Sang-Wook Kim and colleagues present their study using IVUS to investigate the clinical outcomes of recurrent ISR lesions treated with repeated stenting. They found that successive stenting of recurrent ISR lesions was not associated with a decrease in minimal stent area, but rather with chronic stent underexpansion and a high rate of adverse events.
Drs. Sergey Yalonetsky and Avraham Lorber from the Department of Pediatric Cardiology and GUCH Service, Rambam Healthcare Campus, Technion Faculty of Medicine in Haifa, Israel, describe their study of percutaneous closure of a secundum atrial septal defect in elderly patients. They found that in the absence of severe left ventricular dysfunction, the transcatheter approach provides acceptable results in patients who are older than 60 years of age at the time of treatment. Dr. Satinder Sandhu, from the University of Miami, has provided a commentary to accompany this article.
In the next original research article, Dr. Akiyoshi Miyazawa and colleagues from the Center for Cardiovascular Technology, Stanford University Medical Center, in Stanford, California, describe an analysis to compare the morphology of late incomplete stent apposition accompanying bare-metal stenting (BMS), intracoronary radiation and sirolimus-eluting stents (SES) using serial IVUS. They found that plaque reduction primarily contributes to late incomplete stent apposition after BMS, whereas vessel expansion is the primary factor for intracoronary radiation and SES.
In the last original research article, Dr. Fuminobu Yoshimachi and colleagues from the Aomori Perfectural Central Hospital, Aomori, Japan and Hyogo Medical College, Tokai University School of Medicine and Shonan Kamakura General Hospital, present data from in vitro trackability tests and experiments in a porcine model to demonstrate the feasibility of using a kissing balloon technique through a 5 Fr guiding catheter with a 0.010 inch guidewire and 0.010 inch guidewire-compatible balloons. The authors also report on the first clinical case of protected left main bifurcation treatment using the kissing balloon technique with a 5 Fr guiding catheter.