Emergent strategies in interventional cardiology

Despite the advances in the treatment of patients with coronary artery disease, sudden cardiac death is still unacceptably prevalent. Patients with ischemic heart disease usually require a combination of therapies (drugs and coronary intervention) and may continue to experience symptoms. Recently, numerous percutaneous interventional treatments and diagnostic tools have been developed to diagnose the vulnerable plaque and to treat the large number of patients with myocardial ischemia. Ongoing research on the use of drug eluting stents, catheter based bypass graft (percutaneous approaches that use the adjacent venous circulation to bypass an obstructed artery and stent-based approach for ventricle to coronary artery bypass), therapeutic angiogenesis and myogenesis, and the catheter based devices to detect the plaque vulnerability and composition (lipid-rich atheromatous core, thin fibrous cap, and expansive vessel remodeling) may result in additional diagnostic and therapeutic options for patients with coronary artery disease.