New AMI Guidelines

Cardiovascular disease is a global health problem. Approximately one-third of persons in the world die of cardiovascular disease and a large proportion of these deaths is due to coronary heart disease, of which myocardial infarction (MI) is a major manifestation. As one of the leading health problems in the world, MI is an important outcome measure in clinical trials and observational studies. MI may be defined from a number of different clinical, electrocardiographic, biochemical, imaging, and pathological characteristics. For some time, a general consensus existed for the clinical syndrome designated as MI. As just one example, the World Health Organization for many years defined MI based on symptoms, electrocardiographic abnormalities, and enzymes. However, as more specific biomarkers of myocardial necrosis and more precise imaging techniques became available, the accuracy of detecting MI has changed dramatically. In response, the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC) jointly developed a new definition of MI that was published in 2000. Given the considerable advances in the diagnosis and management of MI since then, the leadership of the ESC, ACC, American Heart Association (AHA), and World Heart Federation (WHF) developed a Global Task Force to update the earlier consensus document. This new universal definition of MI was published in late 2007.