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CARDIOVASCULAR JOURNAL OF AFRICA • Volume 28, No 6, November/December 2017
AFRICA
343
This issue carries the first of what I hope will become a regular
feature. On page 404, McCutcheon and colleagues publish a
coronary angiogram with aggressive in-stent restenosis due
to neo-intimal hyperplasia a short while after coronary stent
implantation. The accompanying optical coherence tomographic
images demonstrate the utility of this technology. I encourage
readers to submit similar unusual or informative images.
The new oral anticoagulants remain expensive and will not
be readily available in countries with limited medical resources.
Warfarin will probably remain the agent of choice for some
time and this almost certainly applies to many countries in
Africa. Jacobs and co-workers from Tygerberg Hospital (page
346) conducted a retrospective review of patients admitted with
warfarin toxicity. They identified the causes of the toxicity and
the human and financial cost. An editorial by Blockman (page
344) points out that warfarin accounts for a significant number of
the adverse drug reactions causing admission to hospital.
In a similar vein, Awad and colleagues (page 350) report on
an investigation on medication adherence among cardiac patients
in Sudan. They determined that the top four barriers to poor
medication adherence among the study participants were the
high cost of drugs, polypharmacy, and lack of pharmacist and
physician communication with patients about their drug therapy.
There is not much individual physicians can do about the high
cost of drugs and polypharmacy is sometimes necessary, but we
should talk to our patients to explain their illnesses and the need
for adherence to medication. It is sad that this does not happen.
Balieva and co-workers report on the electrocardiographic
features found in a sub-group of patients from a larger registry
of patients in Africa with pulmonary hypertension, diagnosed
by clinical and echocardiographic features. They compared them
to ECG features found in a population known to be disease-free
following extensive cardiological evaluation (page 370).
PJ Commerford,
Patrick.Commerford@uct.ac.zaEditor-in-Chief
From the Editor’s Desk
Merry Christmas
and a
Happy New Year
The management and staff of Clinics Cardive Publishing wishes you and
your family a wonderful holiday season and a healthy and peaceful 2018.
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and look forward to being of service during 2018.
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