Standard definition set released for diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 complications

The American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association have released a comprehensive set of data standards to standardize definitions and provide the framework to capture and better understand how COVID-19 affects cardiovascular health.

Individuals with cardiovascular risk factors or pre-existing cardiovascular disease are at greater risk of severe infection from COVID-19, and it is increasingly important to understand the acute and longitudinal impact of COVID-19 on cardiovascular health. Unfortunately, there is no clarity or consensus on definitions of cardiovascular disease associated with COVID-19. Broad agreement on common vocabulary and definitions is needed to pool or compare data from electronic health records (EHRs), clinical registries, administrative datasets and other databases, and to assess whether these data are applicable to clinical practice and research efforts .

This document is intended for use by researchers, registry developers, and clinicians, and is presented as a framework for ICD-10 code development of COVID-19-related cardiovascular disease. The standards are also of great importance to patients, clinicians, researchers, scientists, administrators, public health officials, policy makers and payers.

Published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the new data standard provides a framework for healthcare professionals to lead conversations with their patients by standardizing terminology and attributes for diagnosing COVID-19; cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular complications; symptoms and signs; diagnostic procedures; pharmacological therapy; preventive, therapeutic and supportive procedures; and end-of-life care.