Editorial articles

Garlic has been used for its potential medicinal properties for centuries. It was cited 3,500 years ago by the Egyptians as useful in the treatment of heart disease, tumours, bites and worms. Interest in its use, particularly in reducing cardiovascular disease, has increased markedly over the past two decades with the rise in use of complementary and alternative medicines.

The prognosis for patients with non-ST elevation acute coronary syndromes (ACS) is not benign. Ongoing ischaemia is only one determinant of risk. The presence of ST-segment depression or elevated level of troponins is known to identify a group of patients at high risk of further events (death, MI, re-admission with ACS).The key management issue, however, is regarding which of these patients require early (i.e. in-hospital) revascularisation. Based upon current evidence from studies including FRISC II, TIMI-18, and the recent re-analysis of TIMI-III, our current strategy is to offer invasive investigation and revascularisation to all patients identified as ‘high risk’.

Is it time to forget about diastolic blood pressure? Should we abandon the mercury sphygmomanometer? Is non-pharmacological intervention a waste of time? These were some of the questions discussed at the first Primary Care Cardiovascular Society (PCCS) meeting of 2002 which was carried out jointly with the British Hypertension Society (BHS) on 26th February.

When is an infarct not an infarct? When it is an infarctlet, a necroset or a troponinosis.1 The advent of the cardiac-specific troponins as diagnostic tests has created confusion in the minds of some cardiologists. The fact that cardiac troponins may be used to diagnose previously unsuspected myocardial damage in patients presenting with acute coronary syndromes, when acute myocardial infarction (AMI) has been ruled out by conventional World Health Organization criteria, has been amply demonstrated since the original report by Hamm et al.