These appropriateness criteria for coronary revascularization use a novel approach to help clinician to choose for medical therapy only versus medical therapy and coronary revascularization in patients with acute and chronic coronary disease. Previous recommendations have used either a combination of clinical and coronary angiography data or a combination of clinical data and results of noninvasive cardiac imaging. These new appropriateness criteria try to incorporate all the data: clinical, noninvasive cardiac imaging and coronary angiography. For the noninvasive cardiac imaging data the classical approach with categorization of test results in low, intermediate and high risk categories is used. More than 50 clinical scenarios are considered and they provide the reader with a useful guide for frequently encountered clinical scenarios.
1. ACCF/SCAI/STS/AATS/AHA/ASNC 2009 appropriateness criteria for coronary revascularization. J Am Coll Cardiol 2009;53:530-553.