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Preface

The first edition of the interdisciplinary volume on Vascular Medicine—Therapy and Practice met with an extremely positive response from readers of both the German and the English editions. We have therefore decided to produce a new edition even though only four years have passed since the publication of the first. The advances that have been made in recent years have been tremendous, particularly in the area of endovascular therapy, and in this second edition we have two major aims.

Firstly, we updated and improved the content of the existing chapters. Improvements have mainly involved adding an introductory anatomy section to each of the major chapters. In addition, although the book’s emphasis is still on treatment, a detailed duplex ultrasonography section has been added for each vascular region. This is because duplex ultrasound represents the fundamental method of imaging diagnosis in vascular medicine and is increasingly being carried out in every specialty field in vascular medicine. We hope in this way to contribute to a standardization of the method in everyday usage.

The second aim of the new edition is to achieve a substantial expansion of the content of the book by adding sections and main chapters that did not find their way into the first section for various reasons. This mainly involves the addition of the chapter on “Diseases of the lymphatic system,” along with chapters on “Treatment of acute stroke” and “Renal sympathetic denervation”—two treatment fields that have acquired an increasing or new importance in recent years and in which tremendous progress in interventional therapy of the clinical fields involved can be expected in the future. We are particularly pleased that pioneers of each of these treatment methods have agreed to be co-authors for these sections. The section on the treatment of renal artery stenosis, “Surgical treatment of renal artery stenosis,” is another important addition and comes from Prof. Sandmann’s school in Düsseldorf, one of the most experienced international specialists in this field.

We would like to thank all of the authors for their valuable revisions and new contributions. We are also grateful to Dr. Bedürftig, Ms. Behle, and Ms. Sänger and to all the other staff, who along with the graphic designer Ms. Baum have once again given the book its excellent design.

Readers may notice that there has been a change in the order of the editors’ names. We would like to continue this rotation in the coming years as well as to continue to keep readers informed about the very latest state of developments in the treatment of vascular diseases.