The ACC’s presidential team and several ACC staff were busy at the American Heart Association (AHA) Scientific Sessions 2013 in Dallas, TX, this past week.

The meeting included the latest cardiovascular science with late-breaking clinical trials like TOPCAT, which looked at the treatment of preserved cardiac function heart failure with an aldosterone antagonist, and CORAL, which looked at renal artery stenting in preventing cardiovascular and renal events. Check out CardioSource.org for complete meeting coverage.

The presidential team and I also had the opportunity to meet with many of our international colleagues from all over the globe, including China, Russia, the Caribbean, Egypt, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and several other countries.

To close the meeting, Mariel Jessup, MD, FACC, president of the AHA, and I moderated a session on the next steps for the clinical practice guidelines for prevention. This was a great session geared towards clinicians, and the presenters and panelists did fantastic job answering questions and explaining the background of the guidelines and how clinicians can implement them into every day practice.

The presenters included George Mensah, MD, FACC, who gave an overview of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s (NHLBI) role in research evidence for guideline development; Sidney Smith, MD, FACC, who discussed the current role of ACC and AHA in guideline development; Robert Eckel, MD, who gave an overview of the guideline on lifestyle management to reduce cardiovascular risk; Neil Stone, MD, FACC, who gave an overview on the guideline on the treatment of blood cholesterol to reduce atherosclerotic cardiovascular risk in adults;  Donald Lloyd-Jones, MD, FACC, who gave an overview on the guideline on the assessment of cardiovascular risk;  Donna Ryan, MD, who discussed the new guideline for the management of overweight and obesity in adults; Dr. Jessup, who talked about hypertension protocol; a video message from Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on the recently released scientific advisory on an effective approach to high blood pressure control; and Kim Williams, MD, FACC, who also discussed the new scientific advisory for blood pressure.

There were a few key takeaways from this session: 1) one of the main goals of the guidelines is to foster the physician/patient relationship and encourage discussions related to cardiovascular care; 2) the guidelines are based on the best available data and are living documents, and there are several areas where additional research is needed and knowledge generation is encouraged; and 3) the guidelines are evidence of the strengths of various organizations coming together to achieve the outcomes of improving cardiovascular disease and our patient’s heart health.

In case you missed it, yesterday the New York Times posted a Letter to the Editor from Dr. Jessup and me in response to an article on the cholesterol risk calculator. We note that “the guidelines and risk calculator are doing exactly what they are intended to do — starting a discussion about individual risks for cardiovascular disease and stroke and appropriate steps for prevention and treatment.”

Importantly, as I said in a previous blog post, “with 1 in 3 Americans dying of cardiovascular diseases and stroke, there is a critical need to improve prevention. For this reason, the ACC and AHA stand behind the new guideline and related tools, the process in which they were created and the degree to which they were approved by the panel of experts.”

For additional information on the prevention guidelines, check out the in-depth analysis prevention guideline page on CardioSource.org with expert commentary from leaders in the field, videos, tools and resources.

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