2017 ESC/EACTS Guidelines for the management of valvular heart disease

The Task Force for the Management of Valvular Heart Disease of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (EACTS) The disclosure forms of all experts involved in the development of these guidelines are available on the ESC website http://www.escardio.org/guidelines. Current background information and detailed discussion of the data for these Guidelines can be found in ESC CardioMed - Section 35 Valvular heart disease ... ... Guidelines summarize and evaluate available evidence with the aim of assisting health professionals in selecting the best management strategies for an individual patient with a given condition. Guidelines and their recommendations should facilitate decision making of health professionals in their daily practice. However, the final decisions concerning an individual patient must be made by the responsible health professional(s) in consultation with the patient and caregiver as appropriate. A great number of guidelines have been issued in recent years by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and by the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (EACTS) as well as by other societies and organisations. Because of the impact on clinical practice, quality criteria for the development of guidelines have been established in order to make all decisions transparent to the user. The recommendations for formulating and issuing ESC Guidelines can be found on the ESC website (https://www.escardio.org/Guidelines/Clinical-Practice-Guidelines/Guidelines-development/Writing-ESC-Guidelines). ESC Guidelines represent the official position of the ESC on a given topic and are regularly updated.