The New Cardiology

With its first issue for 1970, Cardiología has become Cardiology.Various reasons justify this change.The clinical journal founded by Bruno Kisch and Wilhelm Löffler, continued by Robert Hegglin and Ivan Mahaim, now spans the broad area of research pertaining to cardiovascular function in health and diseases.The traditional barriers be tween morphology, physiology and biochemistry on the one side, epi demiology, clinical medicine and surgery on the other, have largely dis appeared.Modern cardiology embraces all of these sciences.Its concerns include functions and metabolism of the heart, hypertension and diseases of the large vessels, disorders of the pulmonary circulation.It touches to cardiac surgery, preventive medicine, and the application of bioengineer ing and computer science to studies of the heart and of the vascular sys tem.Significant advances in cardiology range from the subcellular level to the cortical integration of cardiovascular function.Cardiología originated in the German speaking world, and although it soon became trilingual, it has long remained grounded in Central Europe.In the past ten years, however, its influence has spread over most of the old continent, and solid relations have been built in America and Asia.The multilingual aspect of the journal has now become a bar rier to communication.The selection of English as the sole language of publication for Cardiology recognizes the new working habits of today's scientists, and facilitates the recognition of published material.In 1967, a first step was taken to enhance standards of publication by in troducing the referee system.As stressed then by the editors, this was not done in a spirit of pedantism or uniformization.The guiding principle was to assure the journal the widest possible distribution.This discipline has been remarkably well accepted.As we move to Cardiology, we look forward to more exacting standards, and pledge our editorial effort to maintain the highest possible quality of publication.