Clinical, Interventional and Investigational Thrombocardiology PDF

Preface

The active translation of scientific knowledge to safe, effective, widely available and implementable patient care represents a bidirectional, coordinated effort among clinicians, scientists, clinician-scientists, industry, governmental and private-sector funding agencies and deliverers at multiple levels of healthcare. In essence, the foundation for developing new treatments and management strategies is a hybrid of recognized needs, discovery, and modalities of application to individuals most likely to derive benefit. This requires awareness, diversity, communication, and an environment that nurtures a meaningful interaction between those skilled at the bench, clinicians with a gift at the bedside, and a messenger or master facilitator (translational scientist) who understands both disciplines in the context of a larger universe. Applied inquiry is an overriding and sustaining theme for success.

The Practice of Clinical, Interventional, and Investigational Thrombocardiology links fundamental concepts, patient care and applied research, creating a mosaic of related fields into a working paradigm for discovery, innovation and practical solutions. Having experienced several decades of medial specialization and subspecialization, driven by a rapidly expanding knowledge base at the cellular and molecular levels, we believe that the time has come to center our attention on a multidisciplinary approach to both cardiovascular disease prevention and its treatment. This philosophy, beyond offering a unified approach to healthcare delivery, can be applied seamlessly to broader constructs for education, professional training and investigating common illnesses and, through collaborative networks, rare disorders by providing an integrated and dynamic platform that stresses biology, physiology, pharmacology, genomics, proteomics, entrepreneurship and evidence obtained through validated scientific methods.

The basis of collaboration and for establishing a trusting relationship both within the academic community and between its scholarly representatives and the lay public is integrity. The ethical obligation (or "universal good" at which actions and choices are to be aimed) surrounding scientific research underlies an indelible cornerstone to human conduct that was summarized eloquently over 2,000 years ago by Aristotle during lectures to his students at the Lyceum in Athens:

A man must believe in basic truths more than the conclusion. Moreover, if a man sets out to acquire the scientific knowledge that comes through demonstration, he must have a better knowledge of the basic truths and a firmer conviction of them than the connection that is being demonstrated. For indeed the conviction of pure science and the virtue of those dedicated to it must forever be unshakable.

It is our sincerest hope that we have succeeded, with the unconditional support and unfettered patience of our section editors and contributing authors, to illustrate in a succinct and practical manner the logical progression of ideas and distinguishing sequence of events which underlie a system of science created on affirmative syllogisms and an ethos committed thus – "Bench to Bedside to Bench . . ."