Guidelines in Pediatric Cardiology

It is customary for experts in many medical specialties to generate guidelines through scientific societies and organizations recommending, in broad terms, approach to diagnosis and treatment of various diseases. Even though pediatric cardiology lacks a single organization representing the specialist in its field, the task of producing guidelines has fallen on various organization which independently, or collaboratively, produce guidelines for pediatric cardiologists and congenital heart surgeons. In this chapter, we review guidelines for valvular heart diseases, cardiomyopathy, congenital heart diseases, sports medicine, hypertension, Kawasaki disease, cardiac arrhythmias, cardiac resuscitation, anticoagulation therapy, use of diagnostic testing, fetal cardiology, and other topics. These guidelines were published in the past decade, and many were updates of prior guidelines. The goal of this review is to provide readers with brief outline of recommendations made for the various issues addressed. The reviewed guidelines are listed in the reference section for more in-depth understanding of these guidelines.