European Cardiology Review has gone from strength to strength in the past few years, with more than 35,000 readers and 552,297 articles downloaded in 2018–2019. This achievement has been the result of the large number of high-quality manuscripts we receive for assessment for publication and the hard work of our section editors, steering committee members, associate editors and members of the editorial board. I am extremely grateful to everyone for their efforts and generous offers of their time to help build an impressive scientific publication. Radcliffe Cardiology has also played a major role in the development of the journal and the high standard of images both in print and online.
Following on this path, the content of the current issue is second to none, with a cardiovascular epidemiology section, edited by Savarese, dealing with cardiovascular risk and disease prevention, that includes scholarly articles on nutritional aspects of cardiovascular risk reduction by Carro and Panisello, the relationship between e-cigarettes and cardiovascular risk by D’Amario et al. and Orimoloye et al. and an intriguing article by Schnaubelt et al. exploring possible links between meditation and cardiovascular health.
In the field of electrophysiology and arrhythmias, Garvanski et al. present interesting clinical data regarding factors associated with AF recurrence after radiofrequency ablation. In the same section, Snir and Raju discuss current controversial issues in the diagnosis and management of Brugada syndrome. Incidentally, the fascinating medical career, spanning several decades of hard clinical and research work, of one of the key discoverers of the Brugada syndrome, Josep Brugada, is featured in our Cardiology Masters section.
The ISCP cardiovascular pharmacotherapy section features two articles on antiplatelet treatment, one by Lomakin et al., on the cost-effectiveness of platelet function guided therapy and another by Godoy and Farkouh on personalised approaches to antiplatelet treatment.
Highlighting the rapid technological advances in the age of big data that are having a major impact on the diagnosis and management of cardiovascular conditions, Massoomi and Handberg review the role of smart devices in modern medicine.
Acute coronary syndromes continue to attract the attention of cardiologists worldwide and this issue proudly offers a couple of scholarly manuscripts regarding this important topic. One of these is by Banerjee et al., who debate the role of cardiac troponin in the assessment of patients with acute coronary syndrome and renal disease; in the other, Di Filippo et al. critically review the classification, diagnosis and management of takotsubo syndrome.
It has been a great pleasure editing this issue and I hope that our readers will find its content both enjoyable and practical.