Extract
The Guidelines give imaging a greater role in CAD diagnosis and introduce controlling heart rate as the new treatment goal for medical therapy
Gilles Montalescot
The ‘ESC Guidelines on the management of stable coronary artery disease’ were presented for the first time at the ESC Congress by joint Task Force Chairs Prof. Gilles Montalescot (France) and Prof. Udo Sechtem (Germany) and are published in full in this European Heart Journal issue.
Previous ESC Guidelines on the management of stable angina pectoris were published in 2006. The 2013 version gives more prominence to new imaging techniques such as cardiovascular magnetic resonance and coronary computed tomography (CT) angiography in the diagnosis of CAD in patients with stable chest pain.
Another new aspect is that the diagnostic algorithm is based on pre-test probability, in line with the 2010 UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence Guidelines on chest pain of recent onset. The estimation of pre-test probability is based on the latest data measuring the prevalence of coronary artery stenosis in a current large cohort of male and female patients of various ages with various clinical presentations. The 2006 Guidelines based this estimation on the old numbers by Diamond and Forrester from 1979.
