It’s always a boost to begin a new year with some exciting news, and I’m happy to announce that Dr. Morton Kern starts out 2006 as Cath Lab Digest‘s new clinical editor. He will take over from Dr. Reginald Low, CLD’s original clinical editor. We are very grateful to Dr. Low for his years of service to our publication and his help in maintaining CLD‘s tremendous popularity in the interventional cardiology community. Dr. Low’s passion for his work, his clarity and insight have all provided CLD with an extraordinary ideals towards which we continue to orient this publication. We look forward to his contributions to the interventional field itself in the years ahead, and thank him for his kindness and guidance.

Most of you first became aware of Dr. Kern as the editor of The Cardiac Catheterization Handbook, the one-of-a-kind textbook recommended as a favorite, indispensible reference by many professionals in the field. Dr. Kern is a prolific and outstanding author, teacher, practitioner and speaker, and I’m very pleased that his presence will be a regular part of CLD. Starting next month, he will discuss his experiences and thoughts on the interventional field in a letter to readers, the Clinical Editor’s Corner. Dr. Kern’s support of allied professional education has always been strong. His increased involvement with CLD means that we are, indeed, welcoming an old friend to our pages.

This month, CLD captures some of the excitement of the drug-eluting stent ‘race’ from two different perspectives. First, we have an interview with Dr. Charles Simonton, founder of the STENT Registry, which, as you may recall, was the first registry to compare Taxus and Cypher head-to-head in the U.S. Next, author Dennis Chadwick (coincidentally from the same facility as Dr. Simonton, Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, NC) checks out the little guys in the DES field what’s truly cutting-edge from the R&D side.

CLD also shares a quality improvement project from Jim Wade and fellow authors at Community Hospital East in Indianapolis. Readers are taken step-by-step as the cath lab team works to overcome patient flow bottlenecks and offer workable solutions to problems that are faced in many labs across the U.S.

Finally, I want to put a plug in for two new columns and one continuing one. Behind these columns are some pretty fantastic, passionate and committed professionals. First, clinical instructor Jason Wilson, RCIS, continues to answer your cath lab newbie questions, and I encourage you to contact him with your question at hrtfixr7@yahoo.com. No question is a bad question, as every good teacher likes to say. Second, we continue our JCAHO column this month, sharing one lab’s documentation for conscious sedation (in preparation for a Joint Commission visist). I hope you will share your pre- or post-JCAHO inspection results (all information remains anonymous) with readers at rkapur@hmpcommunications.com. Finally, Bruce Coyne, RCIS, LRT, RT, heads up our At the Crossroads column, where you can read patient stories which touched the lives of cath lab professionals. Share your story with Bruce at bnkc99@msn.com.

Enjoy!

Rebecca Kapur, Managing Editor
RKapur@hmpcommunications.com