The US health care reform bill has passed, and it may significantly impact the interventional cardiology field, technology innovation, and day-to-day practice. Several aspects of the bill are related to comparative effectiveness studies that will be initiated to determine optimal interventional strategies. Let us know what you think about the new bill, as we would like to publish articles pertaining to this issue in an upcoming CRM issue. As in previous issues, we have selected a variety of topics for the current issue which we hope you find interesting and stimulating.

In the first of five clinical original articles, Koizumi et al. demonstrate coronary arterial response to high-dose paclitaxel delivered by overlapping polymer-based, paclitaxel-eluting stents for the treatment of bare metal in-stent restenotic lesions. Beaudoin et al. then aim to assess the impact of the export aspiration catheter on angiographic and clinical outcomes in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction. In their submission, Hassan et al. aim to evaluate the mechanism of luminal gain with a novel atheroablation system (Pathway PV) for the treatment of peripheral artery disease using intravascular ultrasound. Next, Mokhtar et al. aim to evaluate the safety and efficacy of a combination of clopidogrel and oral anticoagulants at both short and long term. Using a large database of patients who underwent coronary angiography for clinical reasons, Movahed and Sattur evaluate any association between decreased ejection fraction and the severity of ejection fraction impairment with 10-year mortality.

In our chosen group of case studies, Wright et al. first report a case that demonstrates the potential for extreme aortic atheroma to physically impede angiography and subsequent percutaneous coronary intervention and increase the risk of embolization. Next, Dobbeleir et al. report the case of a patient with previous implantation of two stents in the left renal artery (because of refractory arterial hypertension) who developed, 7 months after implantation, a renal infarction due to late renal stent thrombosis. In their submission, Parikh et al. report the case of a patient with simultaneous stent thrombosis in two coronary arteries following discontinuation of clopidogrel for an elective noncardiac surgery 3 years after drug-eluting stent placement. Utsunomiya et al. report two left anterior descending artery chronic total occlusion cases of percutaneous coronary intervention conducted via wire from the proximal septal branch to the distal septal channel with the retrograde approach. Martins et al. emphasize the high risk of coronary angiography during pregnancy in a very demonstrative case of spontaneous coronary artery dissection requiring emergency coronary artery bypass grafting and ventricular assist device implantation. Lastly, a case of acute myocardial infarction and acute aortic dissection in a patient with ventricular septal defect is reported by Kaya et al.

In our sole review submission, Zoccai et al. provide a concise and updated review on percutaneous coronary revascularization in patients with symptomatic small vessel coronary artery disease. It is that time of year once again; therefore, the first group of select abstracts from Cardiovascular Research Technologies 2010 is presented as our special feature. The second group of abstracts will be presented in our next issue. We invite our abstract authors to develop full-length articles based on their abstracts for publication in future CRM issues.