This book will consider several clinical and interventional topics for which there is uncertainty, continued debate and/or no consensus based on current guidelines. While there are numerous guidelines in cardiology, new and on-going trials that address new drugs treatments and procedures raise many unanswered questions. Furthermore, most practicing cardiologist taking care of the patients are likely unable to digest all of these studies or guidelines and necessarily correctly apply them to their patients. If one considers in the guidelines the frequent use of Level C (consensus), there are many areas or situations where no trial exists. Also, when applying the results of a trial to an individual patient, there can be uncertainty of how this patient should be managed based on the present body of evidence.

This issue of Interventional Cardiology Clinics, guest edited by Dr. Timothy Henry, will cover controversies in the management of STEMI. Topics discussed in this issue include: Systems of care; false positive activation; time to treatment; in hospital STEMI; optimal antiplatelet; advanced cardiogenic shock; out of hospital cardiac arrest; and global challenges, among other topics.

On 16 October 1846, an itinerant New England dentist named William T. G. Morton proved the anesthetic effect of diethyl ether in a public demonstration in the "ether dome" of the Bulfinch Building of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The patient, Gilbert Abbott, suffered no pain, and the surgeon, Dr. John C. Warren, was able to complete a suture ligature of a vas cular tumor of the jaw without the hurry that until then was so necessary. The operation proved a failure, since the tumor recurred; but the demonstration of ether's anesthetic effect was a great success. Operative pain was conquered, and surgery could advance from a crude and unscientific practice where speed was paramount, and the major body cavities could not be entered, into the unique blend of science and art that it is now. "Gentlemen, this is no hum bug," supposedly muttered Warren, perhaps the last noncontroversial assess ment of anesthesiology to be made by a surgeon. The screams of resisting patients in pain were stilled, and quiet entered the operating room for the first time. But the new science of pain relief was quickly wrapped in controversy. An argument immediately arose as to who could legitimately claim primacy for the discovery. Morton's attempt to hide the true nature of his anesthetic agent, coupled with an effort to patent the discovery, clouded his reputation and stimulated other claimants to push themselves forward.