© 2002 by Heart
EDITORIAL
Current and future relevance of guidelines
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor Werner Klein, Medizinische Universitatsklinik Graz, Klinische Abteilung fur Kardiologie, Auenbruggerplatz 15, A-8036 Graz, Austria;
we.klein@kfunigraz.ac.at
There is a widely held belief that guidelines improve the quality of care for patients. However, there is also potential for harm, as any attempt to standardise care ignores the heterogeneity of patients and the complexity of medical decisions
Keywords: guidelines; European Society of Cardiology
Over the past 20 years, practice guidelines have become an increasingly popular tool for synthesis of clinical information. Clinical practice guidelines are commonly defined as systematically developed statements to assist practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances.1
The objectives of guidelines are to enhance appropriateness of practice, improve quality of cardiovascular care, lead to better patient outcomes, improve cost effectiveness, help authorities to decide on the approval of drugs and devices, and identify areas of research needed. Guidelines may also be used as quality measurement for health insurance. We know from the Euro Heart Survey2 that practice varies from country to country in Europe, providing a rationale for achieving a common standard of care for cardiovascular diseases.
A profusion of guidelines has been issued in recent years by different organisations—the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), the American Heart Association, the American College of Cardiology, and
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