Introduction - Professor Richard Kirk 2023

Professor Richard Kirk
MA FRCP FRCPCH
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Introduction
The very latest heart failure guidelines were published in 2022 by the American Heart Association in association with American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the Heart Failure Society of America and are thus summarized in this guide to HF management but it is recommended that the full guidelines are consulted.
HF was defined as "a complex clinical syndrome with symptoms and signs that result from any structural or functional impairment of ventricular filling or ejection of blood". They recognized the limitation of this definition excluded asymptomatic Stage A (at-risk for HF) and Stage B (pre-HF).

There are no recent heart failure (HF) guidelines for children with the last published in 2014. Chronic HF occurs in transplant patients, usually due to coronary allograft vasculopathy, but no guidelines are available. For those Adult Congenital Heart Disease (ACHD) with HF the 2020 European Society of Cardiology (ESC) guidelines for ACHD merely state there is no specific evidence to guide treatment and recommend that the ESC Heart Failure Guidelines revised in 2021 should form the basis of treatment. The ESC 2021 guidelines were published before the SGLT2i evidence of efficacy was known.

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