BMJ  2004;328 (22 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7450.0-h

Editor's choice

Angioplasters and thrombolysers

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

"Paper will surely take over from screens. It's attractive, highly portable, flexible, smells good, and is easy to notate. Within a year, we hope, the BMJ should be available not just electronically but also on paper." History, of course, worked the other way round, and paper preceded electronic communication by centuries—but sometimes the race to be historically first may be close. Thrombolysis arrived as a routine treatment for patients with acute myocardial infarction just before primary angioplasty, but there are now enthusiasts arguing that primary angioplasty should become the first line treatment. Peter Bogarty and James Brophy have imagined a world in which primary angioplasty came first and the enthusiasts are arguing for thrombolysis (p 1257).

There are strong arguments for both treatments, and these are well displayed in a "For and against" by David Smith and Kevin Channer (p 1255). Sometimes we have difficulty urging . . . [Full text of this article]

Richard Smith, editor

rsmith@bmj.com


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