The American College of Cardiology has developed an Expert Consensus Decision Pathway for the diagnosis and management of adult patients with acute myocarditis. The pathway was published Dec. 10 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
The expert writing committee developed the pathway with the latest evidence to offer tailored clinical strategies that account for genetic factors and social determinants of health, according to a Dec. 10 news release shared with Becker's.
Here are three things to know:
- The pathway proposes four stages of classification for patients with myocarditis and offers surveillance and treatment recommendations for each stage.
"This structure, stages A through D, should be familiar to clinicians as it is similar to those previously proposed for other cardiac conditions, such as heart failure or valvular heart disease," Mark Drazner, MD, expert writing committee chair and clinical chief of cardiology at Dallas-based University of Texas Southwestern Medical, said in the release. - The writing committee developed five steps for providers to follow when evaluating a patient with suspected myocarditis: diagnosis, triage, diagnostic testing, treatment and surveillance.
"The initial step for a clinician is to recognize the condition by being aware of its three classic presentations as outlined in the [pathway]," Dr. Drazner said in the release. "Once a patient is diagnosed, clinicians can then follow the next 4 steps in the care pathway, including triaging the patient, obtaining pivotal diagnostic tests, providing appropriate therapies and longitudinal follow-up." - The pathway offers guidance on return-to-exercise protocols and identifies future research priorities for myocarditis care. It also highlights pharmacological recommendations, the significance of genetic predisposition for myocarditis patients and the importance of advanced imaging and endomyocardial biopsy.
A team from Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital and Cambridge, Mass.-based Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard recently studied checkpoint myocarditis, a rare but deadly side effect of some immunotherapy cancer treatments.
Read the complete "2024 ACC Expert Consensus Decision Pathway on Strategies and Criteria for the Diagnosis and Management of Myocarditis" here.