As everyone who takes airplane flights knows, safety is of primary importance as is observed with the accurate counting of passenger numbers, safety demonstrations shown to all passengers, changing doors to automatic before take-off, as well as those checks that are not seen by the passenger but performed by the flight's captain and his crew. Patients hope the same attention to safety for the avoidance of injury and death is shown by the cath lab team. The most obvious complication that is easily avoided is to ensure that the correct patient is undergoing the interventional procedure and that the angiograms match the operator's patients. This practical handbook, edited by some of the world's leading interventional cardiologists, provides the reader with a good grounding in what complications have arisen in their practices and how they have dealt with them. Simple cases have become complicated; certain complications have recognizable patterns, thus helping the operator cope effectively with them in the future.

Eric Eeckhout, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), Lausanne, Switzerland

Stéphane Carlier, Cardiovascular Research Foundation, New York, New York, USA

Amir Lerman, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA