[Internet in cardiology: practical applications].

Internet is the most important computer network in the world that allow access to large amounts of information and services. During the last months, the internet has grown very rapidly. At January 1996, 147 countries and 6,642,000 computers worldwide (73,000 in Italy) were connected, and 90 millions of users (700,000 in Italy) could access the network (also called the Net). The increase of interest has also grown in the medical field and many medical and biomedical resources are now accessible through the Internet: databases of images and videos of medical interest, research and medical centres, congresses, medical journals (such as British Medical Journal, Circulation, Journal of the American Medical Association, New England Journal of Medicine), medical associations (such as American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology and recently Associazione Nazionale del Medici Cardiologi Ospedalieri). Internet introduced new ways of communication between users: they could use the electronic mall, organize forums on some medical topics through the newsgroups and the mailing lists, access directly to the references of an electronic paper and contact the author by electronic mail. The aim of the current paper is to present the technical aspects a user should know before connecting to the Internet, the accessible cardiological resources and what they could offer to the users.