Craig A. Thompson
Editor

2014

We currently live in an extraordinary time in the management of cardiovascular diseases. Catheter-based interventions have evolved to address a variety of needs through innovation and clinical evidence. Interventional cardiovascular medicine continues to be likely the most rapidly evolving and best-studied field in all of the medical and surgical disciplines. Less than four decades have passed since the first coronary balloon angioplasty by Andreas Grüntzig. In this time, the field has grown to a mature specialty where many appropriate patients with coronary disease can have definitive improvements in lifestyle with PCI compared with stand- alone medical therapy, and many patients with complex disease can have competitive results and outcomes with bypass surgery. The evolution of current PCI techniques, drug-eluting stent support, and success in negotiating even the most complex chronic total occlusions can extend therapy to a lost generation of patients who have historically had poor to no options with any of the aforementioned strategies. It is a testament to the tireless work and dedication of clinicians, medical staff, scientists, and industry that this model for technology and technique development has extended to a variety of other comorbidities that affect our patients’ lives on a daily basis. Peripheral vascular disease, a major marker for poor cardiovascular and cerebrovascular outcomes, can be effectively managed with simple percutaneous techniques.