Seventy?

Some of you may have noticed that this is issue 1 of volume 70, indicating that this honorable journal has apparently survived yet another decade. But things are not quite so simple. When we congratulate someone (or rather the parents) on the first birthday, it means that the young denizen has been around the world for a year. With journals things are different. They are already born with a no. 1 mark.

The Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeon was delivered and originally given the birthname of “Thoraxchirurgie” in April 1953, published in German and edited by Karl Vossschulte out of Gießen. The plan to print six issues per year, a usual number, was immediately challenged by the late arrival. This led to the interesting publishing schedule of issues 5 and 6 of volume 1 being printed only in 1954. Thus, volume and vintage were not synchronized.

When the journal turned ten years old in 1962, the name was changed to the somehow awkward “Thoraxchirurgie und Vaskuläre Chirurgie” and two more editors were recruited: Gerd Hegemann from Erlangen and Ake Senning who had moved from Stockholm to Zurich.[1] Why the heart was still neglected in the title remains unexplained. Abstracts were now published in German, English and French (!), and the latter two languages had also become acceptable for whole original articles. The introduction of all these changes led to even more issues of volume 10 not making it to print in 1962: 3, 4, 5 and 6 - four out of six! The “war of the Erlangen professors” in 1963 and 1964 which Hegemann had to fight with Karl Heinz (aka Julius) Hackethal, who had accused him of 138 cases of malpractice and even one murder, probably did not help the editorial work.

It took two more for a total of 13 years for the journal to become synchronized, which it remained ever since ([Table 1]). The journal then enjoyed a regular schedule with bi-monthly issues for forty years. With the arrival of Hans Georg Borst becoming the Editor in 1979 it changed its name on the way once again to “The Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeon”. Then, in 2006, a constantly growing manuscript load led Editor Wolf-Peter Klövekorn to increase the number of yearly issues from six to eight. This resulted in the now familiar crooked schedule as far as the months are concerned, but all are printed within one calendar year: in January, March, April, June, August, September, October, and December. It still occasionally confuses the present Editor, but luckily Sangeeta Gaur in Noida keeps an adamant timetable for production.

Table 1 Issue publishing throughout the first13 years

Volume	Year	Issues published in the consecutive year
1	1953	5, 6
2	1954	4, 5, 6
3	1955	5, 6
4	1956	5 6
5	1957	4, 5, 6
6	1958	4, 5, 6
7	1959	5, 6
8	1960	5, 6
9	1961	5, 6
10	1962	3, 4, 5, 6
11	1963	3, 4, 5, 6
12	1964	5, 6
13	1965	none!

Be that as it may - if you have started to wonder if you should get out the old birthday card now, you can just as well wait until April – or was that April 2023?

Publication History

Article published online:
09 February 2022

• References

• 1 Vossschulte K. Zum Beginn des zehnten Bandes. Thoraxchir Vask Chir 1962; 10: 1-2