Guidelines

The American College of Cardiology (ACC), the American Heart Association (AHA) and other organizations work together to create guidelines that set the standards of care for the diagnosis, management and prevention of cardiovascular disease.

The guidelines are intended to help you and your health care providers make informed, best possible decisions regarding your care. Please note that the guidelines are written to meet the needs of most patients. However, everyone is unique, and how the guidelines apply to you should be a key point of discussion between you and your cardiologist.

Although all of the documents are freely available, they are often long and written for the health care provider. To make them easier to understand, here you will find summaries of the key points. We provide links to the full documents on the Journal of the American College of Cardiology's website.

We urge you to review these key points, print them out if you like, and talk with your care team about how the guidelines relate to you and your condition. That is, after all, what being CardioSmart is all about—being empowered to work with your physician in managing your care to ensure the best possible outcome.