Editor's Commentary

Cause of Ascending Aortic Dilatation in Patients with Bicuspid Aortic Valves: The Final Link

It is not often that an Editor receives a manuscript by an author who is 93 years of age and calls himself “fully employed.” The article published here is a prime example for longer-than-a-lifetime experience, you could almost call it an obsession. Francis Robicsek has pondered about the aortic valve and root virtually for decades. This entity can be considered one of his many pastimes apart from sternal anomalies, Mesoamerican history, Spanish-Colonial art, Medieval-Dutch paintings, and Russian icons. As an Honorary Member of the German society he has served as a reviewer for the ThCVS, again longer than anybody else, and continues to do so.

Here you have one more chance to learn about the thoughts of one of the all-time greats of our profession, and from what I've heard there may be more to come. The Editor, however, must declare a Conflict of Interest: Francis Robicsek is allegedly the only man who, with true Hungarian grandeur, ever gave my mother a “baisemain.”