Two separated interventional cardiology societies in Japan, JSIC and JACCT, successfully reunited and a new society has been formed. These two societies had had a long history from the era of balloon angioplasty. Each society its own scientific journal but we unified also the two journals and started a new journal. That is the Cardiovascular Intervention and Therapeutics (CVIT) journal. Dr. Sumiyoshi, the former Editor-in-Chief of the CVIT journal, worked hard to complete the successful unification. We had a long-standing history and we have already published 24 volumes before the unification. Thus, we started the new CVIT journal from the volume number 25.

Dr. Tetsuya Sumiyoshi acted as Editor-in-Chief from 2006 to 2010. He demonstrated leadership to progress the journal. He has established efficient review system and made our journal scholarly advance. Unfortunately, Dr. Sumiyoshi retired because of his retirement age. I was appointed as the new Editor-in-Chief of the CVIT journal.

Asian style intervention is sometimes unique because of the economic and patient background. We would like to focus not only on standard therapeutics but also on regionally specific ideas. These new ideas may open a new filed even though they look funny in the beginning. Thinking of history of PCI, balloon angioplasty and stents were derived from the western countries. Asians have tried to do good PCI for patients and developed interesting procedures such as CTO technique and device, left main intervention, high penetration rate of transradial intervention and other styles of interventions. The CVIT journal will focus regional creative attempts.

This journal will pick up new ideas in all the fields of the coronary intervention, peripheral intervention and structural heart disease. Furthermore, we are also interested in assisting devices, imaging of cardiovascular disease, pathophysiology of atherosclerosis and mechanism of complications in cardiovascular intervention.

We hope the CVIT journal to become a leading journal in the field of cardiovascular intervention.

Yuji Ikari, MD., Ph.D.

Editor-in-Chief,

The CVIT journal