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Interactive CardioVascular and Thoracic Surgery (ICVTS) has been selected to be indexed and included in MEDLINE/PubMed

CHUV, Service de Chirurgie Cardiovasculaire, Rue du Bugnon 46, 1011 Lausanne, Switzerland

Tel.: +41-021-3142280; fax: +41-021-3142278

E-mail address: ludwig.von-segesser{at}chuv.ch

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institute of Health, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda MD 20894 has communicated to our editorial office in Martigny, Switzerland on 2nd July 2007, that following a recently completed review for inclusion in the National Library of Medicine's MEDLARS system by the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee, composed of authorities knowledgeable in the field of biomedicine, such as physicians, researchers, educators, editors, health science librarians, and historians, Interactive CardioVascular and Thoracic Surgery (ICVTS) has been selected to be indexed and included in MEDLINE/PubMed. Databases in the MEDLARS system are available online in the U.S. and throughout the world. Citations from the articles indexed, the indexing terms, and the English abstract printed in the Journal will be included in the databases.

This is a major step forward in the history of Interactive CardioVascular and Thoracic Surgery which was started as a somewhat experimental publication focussing on web-driven features (www.icvts.org: [1]), in contrast to the paper-based approach of the traditional scientific journals in our field. As a matter of fact, full text HTML downloads per month from ICVTS (n=38,269 in June 2007) now outnumber those from our traditional sister publication, the European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (EJCTS) (www.ejcts.org: n=32,728 in June 2007), and this despite the fact that the EJCTS has by now an ISI impact factor of 2.106.

Open access for ICVTS has certainly played a major role in this development. However, there are a number of additional contributors to this success like the concept of virtual conferencing. Virtual conferencing on ICVTS is based on a public discussion period on www.icvts.org with edited comments and replies on the web. These discussions are stored in the ICVTS archive and published together in the printed hard-copy in a traditional paper format. This is just one of the specific ICVTS features.

Furthermore, the Best Evidence Topics (BET) [2] section animated by Joel Dunning [3, 4] for several years now, searching for the evidence in thoracic and cardio-vascular controversies, has certainly strengthened ICVTS. In addition to a broader scope including work from basic science, engineering and other disciplines related to our thoracic and cardio-vascular activities we encouraged (and still encourage) reports in ICVTS on negative experiences (those usually not reported), including both failed experimental studies as well as clinical complications.

Indexing the back content will take some time. However, this is not an ICVTS specific but much more general issue as demonstrated by Hieronimi Fabrici ab Aquapendente works on venous valves [5], the basis of William Harvey's work [6] who was a pupil of the former in Padua, Italy. A search with the term ‘venous valve’ in ICVTS brings 2 references, in EJCTS with about 10 times more content, there are 6 references, and in Medline there are 921, the earliest being from 1935. The interesting thing here is, that the venous valves found at the jugular origin by Künzli et al. [7] which prevent efficient retrograde cerebral perfusion (and protection), were already described and drawn by ab Aquapendente more than 400 years earlier [5] in his Tabulae primae: Imprimis ergo ad interna iugularis exortum scilicet in inferno colli termino, sunt bina ostiola A. etc. literally: in the beginning of the jugular vein, at the basis of the neck, there are double venous valves A. etc. (the letter A. referring to the corresponding drawing).

	References

Top References

 

1. von Segesser LK. Surgical technique versus technology for surgery: a plea for an open mind towards new technology. Interact CardioVasc Thorac Surg 2002; 1:1–3.[Medline]
2. von Segesser LK. Writing off evidence in evidence based medicine. Interact CardioVasc Thorac Surg 2003; 2:403–404.[Free Full Text]
3. Hoschtitzky A, Dunning J, Hooper T. Does clopidogrel rather than aspirin plus a proton-pump inhibitor reduce the frequency of gastrointestinal complications after cardiac surgery. Interact CardioVasc Thorac Surg 2007; 6:534–537.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
4. Kunadian B, Kunadian V, Balasubramanian S, Dunning J. Should the tricuspid valve be replaced with a mechanical or a biological valve ? Interact CardioVasc Thorac Surg 2007; 6:551–557.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
5. ab Aquapendente HF. De venarum ostiolis. Ex Typographiia Laurentij Pasquati, Patavii, 1603.
6. Harvey W. De motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus. Francoforti 1628.
7. Künzli A, Zingg PO, Zünd G, Leskosek B, von Segesser LK. Does retrograde cerebral perfusion via the superior vena cava cannulation protect the brain. Eur J Cardiothorac Surg 2006; 30:906–909.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

This article has been cited by other articles:

				L. K. von Segesser Impact Factor 2.106 reached by the European Journal of Cardio-thoracic Surgery on its 20th anniversary in 2007 Eur. J. Cardiothorac. Surg., February 1, 2008; 33(2): 141 - 142. [Full Text] [PDF]

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