The JTCVS: A year in review

Article Outline

• Copyright

As we start Volume 138, we have highlighted the Officers and Council of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery as well as the Associate Editors of the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery (p 2).

I am pleased to report that we have had an increase in the number of very high-quality papers submitted to the JTCVS this year from many important centers throughout the world. This increase in volume obviously means an increase in the workload of our entire Editorial Board including our ad hoc reviewers. I am pleased to announce the top 10 reviewers on our Editorial Board: John Ikonomidis, Harold Lazar, Marc Gillinov, Marc Moon, James Luketich, Marko Turina, Richard Weisel, Thierry Carrel, Todd Rosengart, and Emile Bacha. I also would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the top 10 reviewers who are ad hoc members of our Editorial Board who have also done an outstanding job: Rakesh Suri, Victor Ferraris, Leonard Girardi, Hari Millidi, Michael Argenziano, Verdi DiSesa, Gianni Angelini, Munir Boodhwani, Bill Gaynor, and Nirmal Veeramachaneni. These individuals, along with many others, provide the quality Journal we have today. Also, I would like to take this opportunity to remember Alan Hilgenberg. He was an outstanding person and surgeon as well as member of our Editorial Board and we will miss him. Dr Irving Kron has been appointed to assume Dr Hilgenberg's spot on the Editorial Board.

You have seen a number of changes in the Journal in the past 18 months, and you will see more in the coming months related to organization and types of articles. One new section now widely read is the Expert Commentary section, which is a commentary on real problems in cardiothoracic surgery written by acknowledged leaders in the field. These are not reviews, but professional opinions based on extensive personal experience from those who have either established a field or made significant strides in those fields.

With our publisher, Elsevier, our Table of Contents will now appear in advance of the Journal's publication on CTSNET and will indicate not only the CME articles but also available videos. We are planning to ask all authors who have written articles about operative techniques to submit an accompanying video, which would be stored on CTSNET for viewing as you read the article.

As many of you know from my first editorial as Editor of the JTCVS, I am a firm believer in the service line concept. In this regard, we have added anesthesiologists, perfusionists, and intensivists to our Editorial Board. Most recently, I have appointed 2 well-known cardiologists to our Editorial Board, Dr Patrick O'Gara from the Brigham and Women's Hospital and Dr Robert Bonow of Northwestern in Chicago. Both are experts in the diagnosis and treatment of valvular heart disease. We are also adding a new section to the Journal entitled “Perioperative Management.” So much of what we do as cardiothoracic surgeons involves preoperative diagnostics, perioperative management of such modalities as cardiopulmonary bypass, and postoperative intensive care and treatment. Circling back to the service line concept, we feel it is important to solicit articles in these various areas because so much of what we do depends on good postoperative care expected by the public and our peers. These articles may involve the pharmacologic treatment of surgical complications or perhaps new ways to handle such common complications as atrial fibrillation.

We have recently changed the structure of the Brief Communication section, by dividing it into clinical case reports, brief communications that highlight operative techniques, and brief communications of research applications, which may show a new laboratory technique in preliminary form. These are short articles meant to be introductory to our readers in all different aspects of clinical and experimental cardiac surgery.

The Thoracic Surgical News, a publication of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery that is widely circulated, will highlight articles from each section of the Journal the month prior to publication to bring to our attention some of the many outstanding articles in the Journal.

With all of these new changes as we document advances in the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular and thoracic disease, we would very much like to hear your opinion and suggestions about and for the Journal.

We again thank our readers for important contributions and critiques and we thank our Associate Editors and all of our reviewers for a tremendous job this past year. I am looking forward to an even better year in 2009–10.