Editorial

Presentation

Presentación

Eduardo Meaney*

* Editor en Jefe de la Revista Mexicana de Cardiología

With this issue, focused on a set of topics of congenital heart diseases, we start a new modality that will be incorporated in the "customs and habits" of our Journal. From time to time we will invite a national or foreign distinguished colleague to act as a guest editor of thematic and coherent issues dedicated to relevant aspects of our field. With this strategy we try not only to get some help in bringing off the heavy burden of our editorial tasks, but mainly we pretend to facilitate and promote a wider participation in the duty of communicate the work and achievements of our constituency. In this context we welcome and appreciate the collaboration of Dr. Lucelli Yáñez-Gutiérrez, notable member of the Servicio de Cardiopatías Congénitas, UMAE Hospital de Cardiología del Centro Médico Nacional Siglo XXI and her laborious group, whose papers inform the present issue of the Journal. The art and science of pediatric cardiology and the knowledge of congenital heart disease, as all we know, has evolved with fascinating velocity in the last thirty years. In the time that my generation was educated and trained, the scarce cardiologists focused on pediatric cardiology were adult cardiologists converted by themselves in cardiovascular pediatricians, driven by good intentions but without further training or fundamental wisdom in general pediatrics. Worst, the same catheterization specialists that performed invasive heart studies in adults to document valve or coronary heart diseases, were the same persons that catheterized children, some of them with complex forms of congenital cardiopathies. Even if we do not like it, nowadays, the so-called "integral cardiology", is an impossible dream. The extreme complexity of our specialty demands, in the present time, cardiologists specifically trained in each field, in order to achieve the dexterity and knowledge needed to provide the better care to our patients. But that does not mean that modern cardiologists ignore almost everything about related subspecialties. "Cardiology is unique and undivided" I used to say many years ago as a means of defending the concept of integral cardiology. The phrase is still correct if we do something in order to attain a healthy equilibrium between the excessive parceling and the rational specialization. The colleagues of the Servicio de Cardiopatías Congénitas, UMAE Hospital de Cardiología del Centro Médico Nacional Siglo XXI give us a useful tool to achieve the needed balance: a multidisciplinary group, that can be composed by adult and pediatric clinical, interventional, and surgical cardiologists, with the additional help of expert cardiovascular iconographers, therapists, rehabilitation specialists, psychologists, social workers, and nutritional professionals, among others. These multidisciplinary clinics are mandatory in all medical tertiary referral centers in order to improve early detection and correct diagnostic, to selection the better therapeutic strategy tailored to every case, to up-grade the teaching of modern cardiology, to facilitate research and to guarantee a superb long-lasting follow-up. The papers of this issue represent the coordinated and hard labor of a group with clear ideas about the absolute need of collaboration and duty division in modern medicine. Thanks to all of them.

Nota

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