The American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) released an updated guideline for the management of adult congenital heart disease (ACHD) patients. The guideline presents a new classification system which considers patients functional status by the presence of cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular problems. This system intends to capture the complexity of the disease in terms of both anatomy and physiology, rather than anatomy alone.
This classification system provides the basis for making lesion-specific recommendations for clinical follow-up and testing modalities such as electrocardiograms, transthoracic echocardiography, cardiovascular magnetic resonance, and exercise testing. Patients with significant Congenital heart disease, who are treated in ACHD centers have better outcomes than those treated in centers without ACHD expertise. The need for…
