Ever since the seminal first balloon angioplasy in a young patient with angina pectoris on 16 September 1977 by the late Andreas R. Grüntzig at the University Hospital Zurich, interventional cardiology has contributed importantly to the rise of cardiovascular medicine. With the advent of drug-eluting stents, restenosis has become less important, butwhetherornot it affectshardoutcomes including ...

Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States in both women and men, and each year for more than 2 decades, more women than men have died (Figure 1). In 2006, 41.3 million women (34.9%) and 38.7 million men (37.6%) were living with cardiovascular disease, reflecting mortality in 454.6 thousand women and 409.9 thousand men in 2005, with coronary heart disease res...

The latest statistics from the American Heart Association are disturbing: In 2004, an estimated 865 000 Americans will develop a new acute coronary syndrome. Another 700 000 will have a stroke. Unfortunately, the contribution of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) to prevent such catastrophic outcomes has been limited. To date, intervention cardiologists have been constrained to the treatm...

Despite the advances in the treatment of patients with coronary artery disease, sudden cardiac death is still unacceptably prevalent. Patients with ischemic heart disease usually require a combination of therapies (drugs and coronary intervention) and may continue to experience symptoms. Recently, numerous percutaneous interventional treatments and diagnostic tools have been developed to diagno...

Background: Since 1987, a nationwide survey of percutaneous cardiac interventions is performed annually in Switzerland, which allows recognition of contemporary trends and comparison with other countries. Methods: Volume and type of procedures performed during the year 2006 were collected by means of a standardised questionnaire from all adult percutaneous cardiac intervention centres in Switze...

A hybrid strategy is a combination of catheter-based therapy and traditional surgical intervention. This concept of combining the tools available only in the catheterization laboratory with the tools available only to the surgeon in order to minimize surgical morbidity has evolved since its implementation in the 1990s.1 Over the past decade, with advancement in stent technology and refinement o...