The future of interventional cardiology

Before speculating on where interventional cardiology is heading to, it may be helpful to reflect on its true origin. For many of you, early or halfway through your career, interventional cardiology may seem a well-established and mature subspecialty. For you it has always been a major component within the field of cardiology. However, for those of us who were already here before interventional cardiology even existed and have witnessed its birth, child- hood, and adolescence, interventional cardiology is just a moment in time. Currently, we feel pretty confident that we are treating coronary artery disease adequately with prompt interventions for the management of acute myocardial infarctions and chronic conditions with sophisticated instruments, excellent results, and satisfied patients. We also felt confident when we had balloons only. Yes, there were many failures back then, but interventional cardiology would have never flourished if it was not for optimism. I keep a video recording of our colleague and father of interventional cardiology, Andreas Gruentzig, MD, just before his untimely death. He said that balloons were the solution for many conditions, but also that we needed much more than that if we wanted to solve the obvious problems of coronary artery obstruction. The next..