American College of Cardiology & American Heart Association:
Imaging for Heart Failure
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Heart Failure Facts
- 5 million people suffer from heart failure in the U.S. annually
- 500,000 new cases are diagnosed each year
- 12-15 million office visits per year attributed to heart failure
- 6.5 million hospital days each year
- 300,000 deaths annually
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The importance of medical imaging to high quality health care is reflected in the wide variety of organizations that incorporate imaging into their medical practice guidelines. Such guidelines are based upon proven, widely accepted standards of care.
- Two of the prominent medical specialty societies that incorporate medical imaging into their guidelines are the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA). The joint ACC/AHA guidelines identify the importance of imaging in such conditions as heart failure, angina, and valve disorders.
One condition of particular importance to an aging America is heart failure, which affects 5 million individuals in the US. The ACC/AHA Guidelines for the Evaluation and Management of Chronic Heart Failure in the Adult are designed to assist physicians in clinical decision-making.1 Click here to view the study
- Although there is no definitive diagnostic test for heart failure, the ACC/AHA guidelines stress that, along with a thorough history and physical exam, a two dimensional echocardiogram coupled with Doppler flow studies represents "the single most useful diagnostic test in the evaluation of patients with heart failure."
- This imaging technique provides cardiac specialists with critical information about the primary abnormality within and around the patient's heart.
- A two dimensional echocardiogram coupled with Doppler flow studies allows for the measurement of left ventricular ejection fraction – an important indicator of the pumping ability of the heart – and a quantitative assessment of various vascular structures.
- Other imaging modalities – including MRI and CT – are also useful, according to the ACC/AHA guidelines, in evaluating and recognizing the nature and severity of the problem.
1 ACC/AHA Guidelines for the Evaluation and Management of Chronic Heart Failure in the Adult: A Report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines (Committee to Revise the 1995 Guidelines for the Evaluation and Management of Heart Failure), Hunt SA, Baker DW, Chin MH, Cinquegrani MP, Feldman AM, Francis GS, Ganiats TG, Goldstein S, Gregoratos G, Jessup ML, Noble RJ, Packer M, Silver MA, Stevenson LW, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2001; 38:2101-13.
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