The major cardiac imaging societies weighed-in on the AHA/ACC’s new Chest Pain Guidelines, highlighting the notable shifts coming to cardiac imaging, and the adjustments they could require.
The cardiac CT and MRI societies took a victory lap, highlighting CCTA and CMR’s now-greater role in chest pain diagnosis, while forecasting that the new guideline will bring:
- Increased demand for cardiac CT & MR exams and scanners
- A need for more cardiac CT & MR staff, training, and infrastructure
- Requests for more cardiac CT & MR funding and reimbursements
- More collaborations across radiology, cardiology, and emergency medicine
The angiography and nuclear cardiology societies were less celebratory. Rather than warning providers to start buying more scanners and training more techs (like CT & MR), they focused on defending their roles in chest pain diagnosis, reiterating their advantages, and pointing out how the new guidelines might incorrectly steer patients to unnecessary or insufficient tests.
FFR-CT’s new role as a key post-CT diagnostic step made headlines when the guidelines came out, but the cardiac imaging societies don’t seem to be ready to welcome the AI approach. The nuclear cardiology and radiology societies called out FFR-CT’s low adoption and limited supporting evidence, while the SCCT didn’t even mention FFR-CT in its statement (and they’re the cardiac CT society!).
Echocardiography maintained its core role in chest pain diagnosis, but the echo society clearly wanted more specific guidelines around who can perform echo and how well they’re trained to perform those exams. That reaction is understandable given the sonographer workforce challenges and the expansion of cardiac POCUS to new clinical roles (w/ less echo training), although some might argue that echo AI tools might help address these problems.
The Takeaway
Imaging and shared decision-making play a prominent role in the new chest pain guidelines, which seems like good news for patient-specific care (and imaging department/vendor revenues), but it also leaves room for debate within the clinic and across clinical societies.
The JACC seems to understand that it needs to clear up many of these gray areas in future versions of the chest pain guidelines. Until then, it will be up to providers to create decision-making and care pathways that work best for them, and evolve their teams and technologies accordingly.
