Guidance
This guideline covers investigation and management of heart valve disease presenting in adults. It aims to improve quality of life and survival for people with heart valve disease through timely diagnosis and appropriate intervention.
For NHS England and NHS Improvement’s position on transcatheter aortic valve implantation for people at low or intermediate surgical risk, see the implementation strategy for transcatheter aortic valve implantation.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- referral for echocardiography and specialist assessment
- pharmacological management
- indications for interventions
- interventions
- monitoring after an intervention
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals
- Commissioners and providers
- People with heart valve disease, their families and carers
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline was commissioned by NICE and developed at the National Guideline Centre, which is hosted by the Royal College of Physicians.
This guideline updates and replaces the recommendations on valve surgery and percutaneous intervention in the NICE guideline on acute heart failure (published October 2014).
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.