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Vascular Medicine section to keep audience informed of trends
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The new section of Cardiology Today entitled Vascular Medicine reflects the maturation and convergent evolution of two pivotal streams of the contemporary cardiovascular enterprise.
Vascular biology, a discipline that emerged from laboratory studies conducted over the last 30 years, has grown into a multifaceted discipline ripe for clinical translation. Endothelial dysfunction, originally a laboratory curiosity, has given rise to clinical research tools and concepts that affect our daily practice. Angiogenesis, a field originally rooted in understanding tumor growth, has inspired many clinical investigators in the cardiovascular arena. Vascular inflammation, an arcane discipline just a decade ago, has led to practical clinical applications that promised to change the practice of medicine.
The advances in vascular developmental biology have shed new light on clinical congenital heart defects. These examples illustrate how clinicians have embraced basic vascular biology and hastened the reduction to practice of the discoveries of basic scientists.
Concomitant with this rapid evolution of the science of vascular biology, the cardiology community has increasingly ventured beyond the coronary arteries to other arterial beds and the venous system. Contemporary trainees in interventional cardiology routinely seek training in peripheral arterial disease. Our noninvasive diagnostic laboratories, rooted in the “heart stations” of yore, now routinely perform noninvasive studies that reach beyond the heart to encompass the peripheral arteries and veins. Cardiovascular specialists increasingly wish to expand their horizons in imaging beyond the heart and its arteries to noncardiac vessels. Long focused on a cardiocentric approach, our training curricula now include the cognitive aspects of vascular medicine including understanding of venous thromboembolism, the vasculitides, autonomic function, and peripheral vascular physiology.
In view of this confluence, Cardiology Today now includes the Vascular Medicine section which will subsume a number of sections in the publication, including the former Vascular Biology section of which I was section editor. Vascular Medicine will unite the laboratory and clinical aspects of vascular disease. A multidisciplinary editorial team consisting of world leaders in their respective fields will share the responsibility, challenge and fun of launching this new ecumenical effort.
Cardiologists have an insatiable appetite for new and promising opportunities for learning, and for helping our patients. We believe that this omnibus “vascular” rubric will reflect current trends in cardiology and provide a stimulus for the rapid and effective union of vascular biology and clinical vascular medicine toward the end of advancing the field. As an important component of cardiology, those of us involved in vascular disciplines aspire to use this new platform to communicate the excitement and possibilities of our enterprise to the general cardiology readership of this widely read and influential publication.
Peter Libby, MD, is chief of cardiovascular medicine at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Mallinckrodt Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.