As we start another new year of publication, it is gratifying that the opening words should have been written on behalf of our publisher, Cambridge University Press. In my previous Newsletter,1 I referred to the major plans in hand from the publisher to take the Journal into the electronic age. In the message preceding these comments, Dan Edwards, who now has day-to-day responsibility for our activities at Cambridge University Press, has amplified these arrangements. In this opening issue for 2006, we introduce another initiative, which hopefully will find favour. Throughout our next two years of publication, in addition to continuing our series of reviews concerned with Continuing Medical Education, such as the assessment of the “wall-to-wall” heart from our late much lamented colleague Bob Freedom, which appears in this issue,2 and regular “extras” such as the publication of the text of the Mannheimer Lecture on behalf of the European Association, given in Copenhagen last year by Lindsey Allan,3 we commence the publication of a series of reviews devoted to advances in interventional catheterisation. We were approached some time ago by Lee Benson and Shakeel Qureshi to establish if we would publish such reviews on behalf of the International Society for Interventional Catheterisation. We were delighted to accept this offer, but indicated to Lee and Shak that, if such reviews were to be published, they would need the seal of approval from the Society. The necessary role of arbitration and assurance of quality was gladly undertaken by Felix Berger, from Berlin, and Maarten Witsenberg, from Rotterdam. Thanks to their efforts, in this issue of the Journal, directly following these comments, we publish the first of these reviews. It comes from the pen of Per Bjørnstad, in Oslo, and concerns the choice of appropriate patients for interventional closure of defects in the oval fossa.4 We have also now collected, thanks to the efforts of Felix and Maarten, the reviews which will follow this initial offering. In the April issue, Matthias Peuster et al. from Bad Oeynhausen, Hannover, and Braunschweig, Germany, will discuss the issue of resorbable implants. Thereafter, in the June issue, Derize Boshoff and Marc Gewillig, from Leuven in Belgium, will address aspects of interventional therapy for aorto-pulmonary collateral arteries, while the August issue will contain an overview of the use of cutting balloons from Lisa Bergersen and Jim Lock, from Boston. In October, Todd Gudausky and Rob Beekman, from Cincinnati, will discuss current issues surrounding the now well-established role of balloon pulmonary valvoplasty, and we will complete our series of reviews for 2006 with detailed consideration of interventional closure of the arterial duct by Omar Galal, from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A further series of reviews are then planned for 2007, with an authoritative article from Ramesh Arora et al. from New Delhi, India, concerning the interventional treatment of rheumatic mitral stenosis in the final stages of review. We then anticipate receiving further reviews relating to treatment of aortic coarctation, aortic valvar stenosis, closure of ventricular septal defects, percutaneous replacement of arterial valves, and opening the atrial septum. It is our hope that the currently recalcitrant authors of these final reviews will take encouragement from the news of the start of our series, and submit their own reviews for assessment by Felix and Maarten. Having already had access to the material submitted for our initial year, I can attest to its quality. On behalf of all our readers, I thank Lee, Shak, Felix and Maarten for making it possible to publish these reviews in Cardiology in the Young.
No CrossRef data available.