Peer-reviewed medical journals should publish scientifically valid information “to combat misinformation”

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Klaus Hausegger, chairman of the Institute of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology in Klagenfurt, Austria, and president-elect of the Austrian Roentgen Society, will take up a new role as editor-in-chief of the journal CardioVascular and Interventional Radiology (CVIR) in September 2017. He takes over from current editor-in-chief, Dierk Vorwek, chairman of the Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Klinikum Ingolstadt, Ingolstadt, Germany, who has been the journal’s editor-in-chief since 2003. Interventional News spoke to Hausegger about his ideas and aspirations for the journal. 

In your view what is the role of a peer-reviewed medical journal such as CVIR in today’s world? 

Generally speaking, information has become widely and easily accessible via numerous search options and the internet. If you require medical and/or scientific information about a certain topic you just type it into a search engine and you will probably find numerous hits responding to your request. However, many of these hits provide unfiltered and unconsidered information. Therefore, the main role—and even more strongly—it is the duty and responsibility of peerreviewed medical journals to contribute scientifically proven, considered, valid information and knowledge to the vast amount of information and even misinformation that is circulating around. The reader of a peer-reviewed journal should know that he, or she, can rely on the fact that every bit of content from a peer-reviewed journal, such as CVIR, has been rigorously scrutinised for scientific reliability and content by renowned experts in the field.

What are your aims and aspirations for CVIR under your editorship? 

CVIR is one of the world-leading journals in the field of interventional radiology. Of course, it is my main goal to further develop this role of CVIR in the international medical/ scientific field. My predecessor, Dierk Vorwerk did an excellent job of developing and promoting the journal—a path that I would wish to continue. Beside the focus on science, I also want to pay attention to education. My team and I plan to provide our readers with the possibility of acquiring continuing medical education credits by working on selected manuscripts and we want to create a link to the European Board of Radiology (EBIR). It may be of interest to provide summarised state-of-the-art knowledge about certain topics; therefore we plan to publish “special issues” on selected topic on a regular schedule. Overall, the journal should be “the voice of interventional radiology”.

What is the type of research that you would like to see interventional radiologists undertaking and publishing? 

Of course, we want to read and publish scientifically sound and well-performed studies, ideally prospective, randomised trials which address important clinical issues. However, we all know that conditions under which randomised studies are performed quite often do not reflect clinical practice. This might be better reflected by representative cohort studies, retrospective analyses of case series, or the results of well-documented single- or multicentre registries, which we also want to see published in our journal. New ideas and concepts may be reported in the form of brief communications, technical notes or even outstanding case reports. Basic research from the laboratories may also well contribute to the whole portfolio of the journal. And last but not least, we are living in the world of globalisation and data collection. I would be very happy to receive manuscripts, which deal with the evaluation of the influence of interventional radiology on the global health of large parts of the population, based on the analysis of big data. Just as an example, it should be possible to answer the question to which degree crural artery interventions influence the lower limb amputation rate by comparing large population cohorts before and after the wide availability of this intervention.

What is the most memorable research that you read in 2016–17 in CVIR? 

A short selection of my favourites would be a manuscript on perfusion angiography of the foot in patients with critical limb ischaemia; a review article on percutaneous isolated hepatic perfusion in the treatment of unrespectable liver malignancy; a manuscript about the simulation of flow dynamics in aortic type B dissection; a large cohort study on the outcome of peripartal aortic balloon occlusion in patients with placenta praevia; and a meta-analysis on the results of treatment of unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma radioembolization vs. chemoembolization. However, there are many more papers and topics published that are worth reading closely.


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