ACC/AHA Guidelines for Coronary Angiography. A report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines (Committee on Coronary Angiography)

"The ACC/AHA Task Force on Practice Guidelines herein revises and updates the original “Guidelines for Coronary Angiography,” published in 1987 (1). The frequent and still-growing use of coronary angiography, its relatively high costs, its inherent risks and the ongoing evolution of its indications have given this revision urgency and priority. The expert committee appointed included private practitioners and academicians. Committee members were selected to represent both experts in coronary angiography and senior clinician consultants. Representatives from the family practice and internal medicine professions were also included on the committee. The English-language medical literature was searched for the 10 years preceding development of the guidelines. The searches yielded >1,600 references that the committee reviewed for relevance. Evidence relative to the use of coronary angiography was compiled and evaluated by the committee. Whereas randomized trials are often available for reference in the development of treatment guidelines, randomized trials regarding the use of diagnostic procedures such as coronary angiography are rarely available (2). For development of these guidelines, when coronary angiography was a necessary procedure in describing a clinical subset or in choosing a course of treatment and that therapy was shown to have an advantage for the patient, especially in the context of a randomized trial, then the indication for angiography was given greater consideration than indications cited in less-rigorous evaluations of data.

ACC/AHA 2006 Guidelines for the Management of Patients With Valvular Heart Disease. A Report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines (Writing Committee to Revise the 1998 Guidelines for the Management of Patients With Valvular Heart Disease)

"The ACC and the AHA have long been involved in the joint development of practice guidelines designed to assist healthcare providers in the management of selected cardiovascular disorders or the selection of certain cardiovascular procedures. The determination of the disorders or procedures to develop guidelines for is based on several factors, including importance to healthcare providers and whether there are sufficient data from which to derive accepted guidelines. One important category of cardiac disorders that affect a large number of patients who require diagnostic procedures and decisions regarding long-term management is valvular heart disease. During the past 2 decades, major advances have occurred in diagnostic techniques, the understanding of natural history, and interventional cardiology and surgical procedures for patients with valvular heart disease. These advances have resulted in enhanced diagnosis, more scientific selection of patients for surgery or catheter-based intervention versus medical management, and increased survival of patients with these disorders. The information base from which to make clinical management decisions has greatly expanded in recent years, yet in many situations, management issues remain controversial or uncertain. Unlike many other forms of cardiovascular disease, there is a scarcity of large-scale multicenter trials addressing the diagnosis and treatment of patients with valvular disease from which to derive definitive conclusions, and the information available in the literature represents primarily the experiences reported by single institutions in relatively small numbers of patients.

ACC/AHA/ASNC Guidelines for the Clinical Use of Cardiac Radionuclide Imaging—Executive Summary: A Report of the American College of Cardiology/American HeartAssociation Task Force on Practice Guidelines (ACC/AHA/ASNC Committee to Revise the 1995 Guidelines for the Clinical Use of Cardiac Radionuclide Imaging)

The American College of Cardiology (ACC)/American Heart Association (AHA) Task Force on Practice Guidelines regularly reviews existing guidelines to determine when an update or full revision is needed. Guidelines for the Clinical Use of Cardiac Radionuclide Imaging were originally published in 1986 and updated in 1995. Important new developments have continued to occur since 1995, particularly in the areas of acute and chronic ischemic syndromes and heart failure. The Task Force therefore believed the topic should be revisited de novo and invited the American Society for Nuclear Cardiology (ASNC) to cosponsor the undertaking, which represents a joint effort of the 3 organizations