From Arkansas to the West Coast

Welcome to Cath Lab Digest‘s first issue of 2005! We decided to jump feet first into this new year with a double-spotlight issue. Two labs, two regions of the country, and two different focuses. Little Rock, home of the recently named Clinton Presidential Library, features the first freestanding outpatient cath lab in Arkansas, Little Rock Cardiology Clinic. Not content to rest on its laurels, the Clinic will also be installing a CTA department with a new Siemens 64-slice CT scanner. (CLD looks forward to hearing more in a future issue about how that has impacted the cath lab overall.) Hayward, California (across the San Francisco Bay and slightly south of that famed city), boasts St. Rose Hospital, another forward-looking lab that focuses heavily on peripheral vascular procedures. Both labs have unique experiences and perspectives to share. Remember those end-of-the-year, seemingly mandatory, Look Back at 2004 Hightlights that always pop up everywhere? Cath Lab Digest thankfully avoided this obligation. Instead, we offer a much more interesting look ahead, with Richard Beveridge’s Cardiac Trends, starting on page 28. (Who looks back in interventional cardiology these days?) Our letters to the editor are outstanding this month. Among other letters, CLD received comments on the November article, Comparison of Arterial Puncture Closure Devices with Standard Manual Compression After Cardiac Catheterization at Robinson Memorial Hospital, and last month’s article Acute Myocardial Infarction Drug Management, which also sparked an interesting discussion among the Cath Lab Digest editorial board. Admittedly, letters to the editor make us very happy, and we are glad to share them with you. One last note: those of you who have filled out our salary survey thank you! Keep your salary information coming (our survey is on page 52 this month). We will share the results later this year. Enjoy! Rebecca Kapur Managing Editor CathLabDigest@aol.com "Knowledge is the one thing no one can ever take from you."

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