The American College of Cardiology (ACC) has released appropriate use criteria guidelines for multimodality imaging for the diagnosis and management of valvular heart disease.
The guidelines were published online September 1 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography, the Journal of Nuclear Cardiology, and the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery.
The document addresses the use of multiple imaging modalities available to clinicians in the evaluation of patients with the disease, and it presents standardized guidelines for both established and emerging treatment approaches, rating them as "appropriate," "may be appropriate," or "rarely appropriate."
"As imaging technologies and clinical applications continue to advance, the healthcare community must understand how best to incorporate these technologies into daily clinical care and how to choose between new and established imaging technologies," said Dr. John U. Doherty of Thomas Jefferson University in a statement released by the ACC. Doherty is chair of the writing committee that produced the guidelines.
