Project: Understanding guidelines

Understanding guidelines
Understanding heart failure guidelines is a collection of lay summaries of key principles in leading European guidelines.

What is Understanding heart failure guidelines?

Understanding heart failure guidelines is a collection of lay summaries of key principles in leading European heart failure (HF) guidelines, namely the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) guidelines, England’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines and position statements by the Heart Failure Association of the ESC.

Guidelines are documents with suggestions or recommendations for care that derive from scientific evidence to aid patients and healthcare professionals in their decision-making – they are not prescriptive documents. Care must be tailored to each person’s needs through careful collaboration between the person with HF, their family/carers and the HF care team.

The HFPN has developed this collection to raise awareness of key elements of best practice in the care and management of HF. With this collection, the HFPN aims to:

  • increase the uptake of leading guidelines in HF care
  • give confidence to patient advocates and local health policy commentators/champions to scrutinise local and national HF policy, guidance and care arrangements.

The guides in this collection do not replicate or supersede established clinical guidelines for the purpose of formal professional training or accreditation, patient therapeutic education or clinical decision-making. Clinicians, patients and service managers should consult European and national guidance as appropriate.

Click on the buttons below to download the guides:

Prevention Diagnosis The multidisciplinary team Clinical management Comorbidities Patient empowerment and self-care Advance care planning

Who is the Understanding heart failure guidelines collection for?

Understanding heart failure guidelines will be of interest to non-specialist audiences, including:

  • non-cardiology healthcare professionals
  • people with HF
  • patient advocates
  • clinical advocates of best practice and health system reform
  • organisational leaders
  • political or public officials.

Project Advisory Group

Dr Josep Comín-Colet
Bellvitge University Hospital, Spain
Professor Salvatore Di Somma
University La Sapienza Rome, Sant’Andrea Hospital and Associazione Italiana Scompensati Cardiaci, Italy
Professor José Ramón González-Juanatey
University Hospital Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Penilla Gunther
FOKUS Patient and former Member of Parliament, Sweden
Neil Johnson
Croí, West of Ireland Cardiac Foundation, Ireland
Steven Macari
Association Vie Et Coeur (AVEC), France
Sandra Mulrennan
St Bartholomew’s Hospital Heart Failure Service, Barts Health NHS London, United Kingdom
Patricia Vlasman
Let the Beat Go On, the Netherlands

Funders

This project was developed with support from Vifor Pharma.

The Heart Failure Policy Network is an independent, multidisciplinary platform made possible with financial support from AstraZeneca and Roche Diagnostics. The content produced by the Network is not biased toward any specific treatment or therapy. All outputs are guided and endorsed by the Network’s members. All members provide their time for free. The Network is hosted by The Health Policy Partnership .