Skip Navigation


European Heart Journal Advance Access originally published online on April 18, 2006
European Heart Journal 2006 27(10):1134-1136; doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehi862
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
27/10/1134    most recent
ehi862v1
Right arrow E-letters: Submit a response
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me when E-letters are posted
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Related articles in EHJ
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Search for citing articles in:
ISI Web of Science (2)
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by De Ponti, R.
Right arrow Articles by Salerno-Uriarte, J. A.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by De Ponti, R.
Right arrow Articles by Salerno-Uriarte, J. A.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The European Society of Cardiology 2006. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Non-fluoroscopic mapping systems for electrophysiology: the ‘tool or toy’ dilemma after 10 years

Roberto De Ponti* and Jorge A. Salerno-Uriarte

Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, Ospedale di Circolo e Fondazione Macchi, University of Insubria – Varese, Viale Borri, 57, IT-21100 Varese, Italy

* Corresponding author. Tel: +39 0332 278934; fax: +39 0332 393309. E-mail address: rdeponti@alice.it

This editorial refers to ‘Radiofrequency ablation of arrhythmias guided by non-fluoroscopic catheter location: a prospective randomized trial'{dagger} by M.J. Earley et al., on page 1223

The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below.

Searching in PubMed for the string ‘tool or toy’ in the title of medical papers, we found that over the past three decades about 50 papers brought up the dilemma concerning whether a novel technology is a useful tool, or merely an expensive toy. The papers are from 15 different medical disciplines spanning from radiology, neurology, anaesthesia, and surgery. Surprisingly, in almost half of these papers the ‘tool or toy’ dilemma is posed for new technologies introduced in the cardiovascular field. Several of them, such as stress echocardiography and transoesophageal echocardiography, have become widely diffused and have definitely become routine practice. Although this analysis of the medical literature is gross, the result underlines that this dilemma is not so rare. In fact, new technologies are periodically proposed and the reaction of the medical community is usually quite ambiguous, varying from the hardest scepticism to the warmest enthusiasm. Actually, . . . [Full Text of this Article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?

Related articles in EHJ:

Radiofrequency ablation of arrhythmias guided by non-fluoroscopic catheter location: a prospective randomized trial
Mark J. Earley, Refai Showkathali, Maysaa Alzetani, Peter M. Kistler, Dhiraj Gupta, Dominic J. Abrams, Julie A. Horrocks, Stuart J. Harris, Simon C. Sporton, and Richard J. Schilling
EHJ 2006 27: 1223-1229. [Abstract] [FREE Full Text]