Cardiology Clinical Guidelines
Cardiology guideline index: the governing ACC/AHA, ESC, HRS, and AHA guidelines on heart failure, coronary disease, atrial fibrillation, and resuscitation.
Cardiology
The cardiology hub. Indexes the governing ACC/AHA, ESC, HRS, and AHA guidelines on heart failure, coronary disease, atrial fibrillation, and resuscitation.
Cardiology is the medical specialty concerned with the heart and the circulation: the prevention, diagnosis, and management of coronary artery disease in its acute and chronic forms, heart failure across the range of ejection fraction, arrhythmia and conduction disease including atrial fibrillation and the indications for pacing and defibrillation, valvular and structural heart disease, hypertension, and the aorta and peripheral vessels. It spans cardiac imaging, catheter-based intervention, electrophysiology, and the cardiovascular side of resuscitation, and it shares the acutely ill cardiac patient with emergency medicine and critical care. Its guideline base is unusually deep, with parallel documents from the ACC/AHA and the ESC on most major topics.
This section is new. It currently indexes the governing professional-society guidelines for cardiology, each with a source link to the publisher, the journal landing page, or PubMed. Multi-part syntheses in the site’s usual format, integrating several societies’ recommendations into one reference with DOI-linked citations and sequential part pages, are being added and will be linked from this page as they publish.
Governing guidelines
| Guideline | Publisher | Edition | Scope | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 AHA/ACC/HFSA Guideline for the Management of Heart Failure | ACC/AHA with the Heart Failure Society of America | 2022 (replaces 2013 and the 2017 focused update) | Prevention, diagnosis, and management of heart failure across ejection fraction categories, including cardiac amyloidosis, cardio-oncology, comorbidities, devices, and advanced therapies for stage D | Circulation |
| 2023 AHA/ACC/ACCP/ASPC/NLA/PCNA Guideline for the Management of Patients With Chronic Coronary Disease | ACC/AHA with partner societies | 2023 (replaces 2012 and the 2014 focused update) | Diagnosis and management of chronic coronary disease, including lifestyle, pharmacotherapy, revascularization decisions, and team-based care | Circulation |
| 2025 ACC/AHA/ACEP/NAEMSP/SCAI Guideline for the Management of Patients With Acute Coronary Syndromes | ACC/AHA with ACEP, NAEMSP, and SCAI | 2025 (replaces the 2013 STEMI and 2014 NSTE-ACS guidelines) | The full spectrum of acute coronary syndromes from unstable angina through STEMI, including reperfusion, antithrombotic therapy, and post-ACS care | Circulation |
| 2023 ACC/AHA/ACCP/HRS Guideline for the Diagnosis and Management of Atrial Fibrillation | ACC/AHA with ACCP and HRS | 2023 (replaces 2014 and the 2019 focused update) | Classification, thromboembolic risk assessment, anticoagulation, left atrial appendage occlusion, rate and rhythm control, ablation, and risk factor modification | Circulation |
| 2025 AHA/ACC Multisociety Guideline for the Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Management of High Blood Pressure in Adults | ACC/AHA with twelve partner societies | 2025 (replaces 2017) | Blood pressure measurement, risk estimation, lifestyle and pharmacologic treatment, resistant hypertension, and special populations including CKD, diabetes, and pregnancy | Circulation |
| 2020 ACC/AHA Guideline for the Management of Patients With Valvular Heart Disease | ACC/AHA | 2020 (replaces 2014 and the 2017 focused update) | Staging, evaluation, and medical, transcatheter, and surgical management of adult valvular heart disease, and the role of the multidisciplinary valve team | Circulation |
| 2025 American Heart Association Guidelines for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care | American Heart Association | 2025 (updates 2020) | Systems of care, neonatal, pediatric, and adult basic and advanced life support, post-cardiac arrest care, special circumstances, education, and ethics | Circulation |
| 2017 AHA/ACC/HRS Guideline for Management of Patients With Ventricular Arrhythmias and the Prevention of Sudden Cardiac Death | ACC/AHA with HRS | 2017 | Management of adults with ventricular arrhythmias or at risk of sudden cardiac death, including the diseases and syndromes associated with that risk | Circulation |
| 2023 HRS/APHRS/LAHRS Guideline on Cardiac Physiologic Pacing for the Avoidance and Mitigation of Heart Failure | Heart Rhythm Society with APHRS and LAHRS | 2023 | Cardiac resynchronization therapy and conduction system pacing: indications, patient selection, implant management, follow-up, and pediatric use | Heart Rhythm |
| 2024 ESC Guidelines for the Management of Atrial Fibrillation | European Society of Cardiology with EACTS | 2024 (replaces 2020) | The AF-CARE framework: comorbidity and risk factor management, stroke avoidance, and rate and rhythm control, with 130 recommendations | European Heart Journal |
| 2023 ESC Guidelines for the Management of Acute Coronary Syndromes | European Society of Cardiology | 2023 (merges the 2017 STEMI and 2020 NSTE-ACS guidelines) | The full spectrum of acute coronary syndromes from unstable angina through STEMI | European Heart Journal |
| 2021 ESC Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Acute and Chronic Heart Failure, with the 2023 Focused Update | European Society of Cardiology with the Heart Failure Association | 2021; focused update 2023 | Diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic heart failure; the 2023 update revises treatment recommendations on the basis of trials reported through March 2023 | European Heart Journal |
How this section is used
For protocol development, start from the source list above. Each row links to the journal of record, where the full recommendation text, class and level of evidence, and supplementary data are available. Protocols on chest pain pathways, anticoagulation in atrial fibrillation, or heart failure medication titration should cite the edition named in the table, and where an institution follows ESC rather than ACC/AHA documents, the table carries both.
For point-of-care questions, Lumen retrieves from this corpus and cites the page it drew from, so an answer about an ACC/AHA or ESC recommendation can be traced back to the guideline that made it. Departments that run Lumen as a shared workspace can read how a cardiology service runs these guidelines as one shared Lumen workspace.
Related departments
- Vascular Access overlaps on central venous and arterial access in cardiac patients, and on catheter-related thrombosis in patients on anticoagulation.
- Critical Care overlaps on cardiogenic shock, post-cardiac arrest care, and hemodynamic support; the ICU library already carries a Post-Cardiac Arrest Care & TTM series.
- Emergency Medicine overlaps on acute coronary syndromes at presentation, cardiac arrest, and acute arrhythmia.
- Infection Prevention overlaps on device-related infection and infective endocarditis prevention.
- Oncology overlaps on cardio-oncology, cancer-associated thrombosis, and cardiotoxic therapies.
- Nephrology & Dialysis overlaps on blood pressure and cardiovascular risk in CKD, and heart failure with kidney dysfunction.
- Perioperative & Anesthesia overlaps on perioperative cardiovascular evaluation for noncardiac surgery and antithrombotic management around procedures.
- Neurology & Stroke overlaps on atrial fibrillation and stroke prevention, and on cardioembolic stroke.
- Hospital Medicine overlaps on inpatient heart failure, hypertension, and anticoagulation management.
- Clinical Pharmacy overlaps on anticoagulant and antiplatelet management and heart failure pharmacotherapy.
Frequently asked questions
What does the cardiology section of The Clinical Database cover?
The section indexes the professional-society guidelines that govern cardiovascular practice: heart failure, chronic coronary disease, acute coronary syndromes, atrial fibrillation, high blood pressure, valvular heart disease, ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death, cardiac physiologic pacing, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation and emergency cardiovascular care, from both the ACC/AHA and the ESC. Each entry links to the publisher’s page, the journal landing page, or PubMed.
Which organizations publish the guidelines indexed here?
The American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association Joint Committee on Clinical Practice Guidelines publishes the United States guidelines, frequently with partner societies such as HFSA, ACCP, HRS, ACEP, and SCAI. The European Society of Cardiology publishes the European guidelines, in some cases with EACTS. The Heart Rhythm Society publishes the cardiac physiologic pacing guideline with APHRS and LAHRS. The American Heart Association publishes the CPR and emergency cardiovascular care guidelines.
Where United States and European guidelines both exist, which one does the index carry?
Both, where both are current. Atrial fibrillation, acute coronary syndromes, and heart failure each appear twice, once for the ACC/AHA guideline and once for the ESC guideline, because institutions in different regions adopt different documents and the two sets differ in places. The index does not adjudicate between them.
Are multi-part guideline syntheses available for cardiology yet?
Not yet. This section is new. The site’s usual format, a multi-society synthesis split into sequential part pages with DOI-linked citations, is being written for cardiology topics and will be linked from this page as each series publishes. Until then, the governing guidelines table is the reference.
Are these guidelines a substitute for institutional protocols?
No. They are published professional-society recommendations, indexed here to support clinicians and to inform institutional protocol development. Local protocols and medical direction govern actual care.