It's the end of the world as we know it - An era comes to a close

Abstract

in the year 2008 (1). In this timeframe, much work has been done to pursue new strategies to enhance quality and scientific ranking of the “Blue Journal”. In this edito-rial, we will provide a short update on some outcomes of our activity in the last year and a half, and a few thoughts about the new structure of the Blue Journal in 2010.As anticipated in the December 2008 editorial, a key point in our strategy was to consolidate the legacy of the Blue Journal, in terms of its European character and mis-sion, to broaden it up, and integrate it with the require-ments presented by the world situation and advance-ments in science.The analysis reported in the press of the new world economy and demography suggests that countries that once were considered emerging economies in the East and Far East have now become established industrial powers. Over the last few years, in these countries major financial investments have been made in these regions (and are still being made) in education and science to pro-mote the development of the country. Since we started serving as Editors of the Blue Journal, efforts have been made to attract more quality submissions and involve in the editorial activities of the Blue Journal more scien-tists from the Middle East, East and Far East countries. Scientists from China have responded with the greatest enthusiasm, and have contributed a significant number of papers to the Blue Journal in the last year and a half. Analysis of these papers shows the quality of research in China, and how Chinese research in the field of substitu-tive medicine in that country spans the spectrum from traditional to very innovative topics.As is traditional in the Blue Journal, a consistent number of published papers focused on how to exploit the thera-peutic use of extracorporeal blood treatment processes and minimize the harm to patients caused by incidents to the vascular access. Tao et al (2) and Yu et al (3) reported on the improvement of monocyte function and the res-toration of immune homeostasis during the veno-venous hemofiltration treatment of severe pancreatitis in a por-cine pancreatitis model or in patients, respectively. The improvement was more significant in non-septic patients in the early phase of the disease. Mao et al (4) reported on the results of a prospective, pilot study on the effects of coupled plasma filtration and adsorption (CPFA), as com-pared to high volume hemofiltration (HVHF), on the im-mune function of patients with multiple organ dysfunction syndrome. They showed that CPFA increases the anti-in-flammatory to pro-inflammatory mediators ratio, improves antigen presentation ability, and restores leukocyte re-sponsiveness to a larger extent than HVHF. A silent, but potentially hazardous complication of catheter fracture in a totally implantable venous access port was reported by Wang et al (5). After a saline flush, the subcutaneous tis-sue around the port presented a painful, rapid swelling. A chest CT scan showed that the catheter had fractured, and that a fragment had migrated and was embolized into the right hepatic vein. Percutaneous transfemoral retrieval of the catheter fragment under fluoroscopic guidance was successfully performed and avoided more serious com-