%0 Journal Article
%T Interventional cardiology in 2012: comparability of Croatia with international trends
%A Starcevic Boris
%A Hadzibegovic Irzal
%A Sicaja Mario
%A Rudez Igor
%J Cardiologia Croatica
%D 2013
%I Croatian Cardiac Society
%X Interventional cardiology has became among the fastest growing areas in clinical medicine, thanks to technological and pharmacological discoveries over the last few years, which brought important advancements in treatment and overall prognosis of patients with cardiovascular diseases. Benefits of primary interventional treatments became particularly evident in management of acute coronary syndrome, especially in circumstances of organized network of primary percutaneous coronary interventions, which represented a crucial step in development of modern era in cardiology, or even medicine. On the other hand, interventional management of chronic ischemic heart disease recently came to greater focus of attention as the issue of professional challenge, due to exceedingly grown number of investigations. New technologies and devices for treatment of coronary artery disease have become available in 2012 in the world market, as well as in Croatia. However, their implementation for the most depends on availability of financial resources. Further efforts were made around research on novel antiplatelet and antiaggregation drugs, with an aim to develop the agent that would preferably exert greater efficiency, within more favorable safety profile. This was the year in which interventional treatment extended on the structural heart diseases as well particularly due to increase in treatment of aortic steno- sis and mitral regurgitation, whilst cardioembolization, arterial hypertension and peripheral vascular disease become ever more attractive ˇ°battlefieldˇ± for interventional cardiologists. In this review article, we have presented all those modern trends in interventional cardiology in the past year at an international level and compared them to the situation in Croatia.
%K coronary heart disease
%K interventional cardiology
%K acute coronary syndrome
%U http://www.kardio.hr/component/docman/doc_download/261-stranica--page-3-10.html