Introduction

Innovation in Interventional Cardiology extends well beyond coronary stenting. In particular, it involves intravascular imaging and physiological techniques; development of coronary devices to support stent implantation; and, treatment of structural (either congenital or acquired) heart disease. Many of these technical advances have been incorporated into the core curriculum for interventional cardiologists in training as well as in routine practice in our catheterisation laboratories.

The issue faced by physicians today is how to gain experience in these new techniques with a learning curve as short as possible. Although results from well-experienced operators in a specific technique are commonly published in peer-reviewed journals, there is normally a lack of detailed description of procedures in these papers. Thus, “learning the technique” remains only within the scope of those dedicated courses where live cases are performed or with the help of those physicians acting as proctors of a dedicated device.

The aim of this work is to provide the reader with a book that is at the same time either clinical or practice-oriented, covering interventional techniques of special interest to the interventionalist, and focusing on those common problems/dilemmas that beset the cathlab operator. The primary goal is to describe those ‘tips and tricks’ that...