[Advances made in the past year (2009) in the therapeutic approach to hypertensive heart disease, myocardial ischemia, and atrial fibrillation]

Abstract

Knowledge of cardiovascular disease is advancing at a vertiginous pace. Cardiology has always been one of the most scientifically dynamic specialties. Indeed, no other medical specialty presents such a large number of randomized studies aiming to determine the efficacy of distinct therapeutic interventions each year. Equally, cardiology is composed of various subspecialties ranging from the clinical management of types of heart disease that are frequently encountered in daily clinical practice, through the various diagnostic procedures (cardiovascular imaging), to the complex therapeutic techniques of interventional endovascular therapy. Many of the principal medical journals specialize in specific aspects of cardiovascular disease and some have even developed formats of superspecialization that allow knowledge on arrhythmology, interventional cardiology or cardiac imaging to be broadened. In addition, highly important international congresses on general and superspecialized cardiology serve as a window to display the main multicenter studies. The objective of all of the above is to allow the varied and enormous quantity of new or updated information on the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease to be presented to the scientific community. The ambitious aim of the present review is to discuss what we consider to be the main advances in the therapeutic management of three distinct branches of cardiology: hypertensive heart disease, myocardial ischemia and atrial fibrillation.