The American College of Cardiology (www.acc.org)/American Heart Association (professional.heart.org) Terminology is a set of terms intended to represent key data elements and definitions for electronic health records (EHRs) created for patients with cardiovascular disorders. The goals of developing these clinical data standards include: to establish a consistent, interoperable, and universal clinical vocabulary as a foundation for both clinical care and clinical research, including clinical trials; to promote the ubiquitous use of EHRs and facilitate the exchange of data across systems through harmonized, standardized definitions of key data elements; to facilitate the further development of clinical registries, quality and performance improvement programs, outcomes evaluations, and clinical research, including the comparison of results within and across these initiatives. ACC/AHA is fully responsible for the content of this standard.
A Task Force on Clinical Data Standards was convened by the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) where they seated a Writing Committee chaired by Jeffrey R. Boris, MD to develop the terminology in collaboration with the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Association of European Paediatric Cardiologists, the Child Health Corporation of America, the Congenital Cardiac Anesthesia Society, the Congenital Heart Surgeons' Society, the International Society for Nomenclature of Paediatric and Congenital Heart Disease, the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions, and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.
The first domain, Pediatric and Congenital Cardiology (PCC), was published as the 2017 AHA/ACC Key Data Elements and Definitions for Ambulatory Electronic Health Records in Pediatric and Congenital Cardiology (Boris JR et al. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2017 Aug 22;70(8):1029-1095). It is one of sixteen domains of mutual interest that have been identified. The other domains are to be comprised of: congenital heart defect nomenclature, adult congenital heart disease, critical care, cardiomyopathy, cardiac transplantation, pulmonary hypertension, congenital cardiac surgery, echocardiography, diagnostic and interventional catheterization, exercise stress testing and physiology, electrophysiology, cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, fetal physiology, perfusion, and cardiac anesthesia.
The ACC/AHA Cardiovascular and Noncardiovascular Complications of COVID-19 Terminology, is terminology used in support of the American College of Cardiology (ACC)/American Heart Association's (AHA) efforts to collect key data elements pertaining to cardiovascular and noncardiovascular complications of COVID-19 (from 2022 AHA/ACC Key Data Elements and Definitions for Cardiovascular and Noncardiovascular Complications of COVID-19: A Report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Clinical Data Standards. Bozkurt B et al. Circ Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes. 2022; 15:e000111).
ACC/AHA EHR Terminology files are available for download in two formats:| Spreadsheet Column | Content Description |
|---|---|
| Subset Code | The NCI Thesaurus (NCIt) concept code attached to the ACC/AHA concept. NCIt Codes are unique strings that begin with a C and are followed by a series of digits. |
| Subset Name | The name of the terminology set. |
| Concept Code | The NCI Thesaurus (NCIt) concept code attached to the concept. |
| NCIt Preferred Term | The preferred term chosen by NCI EVS that unambiguously describes the concept. |
| NCIt Definition | A text definition of the term created by NCI EVS. |
| ACC/AHA Preferred Term* | The preferred term chosen by ACC/AHA. |
| ACC/AHA Synonym(s)* | Terms chosen by ACC/AHA that are synonomous to the Preferred Term. |
| ACC/AHA Definition* | A text definition of the term created by ACC/AHA. |
| Spreadsheet Column | Content Description |
|---|---|
| ACC/AHA Appendix Subset Code | The NCI Thesaurus (NCIt) concept code attached to the ACC/AHA appendix subset. NCIt Codes are unique strings that begin with a C and are followed by a series of digits. |
| ACC/AHA Appendix Subset PT | The name of the appendix subset. |
| ACC/AHA Header Subset Code | The NCI Thesaurus (NCIt) concept code attached to the ACC/AHA header subset. NCIt Codes are unique strings that begin with a C and are followed by a series of digits. |
| ACC/AHA Header Subset PT | The name of the header subset. |
| ACC/AHA PT* | The preferred term chosen by ACC/AHA. |
| ACC/AHA Definition* | A text definition of the term created by ACC/AHA. |
| NCIt Concept Code | The NCI Thesaurus (NCIt) concept code attached to the concept. |
| NCIt PT | The preferred term chosen by NCI EVS that unambiguously describes the concept. |
| NCIt SYs | The synonyms chosen by NCI EVS that unambiguously describes the concept. |
| NCIt Definition | A text definition of the term created by NCI EVS. |
| Row | Numbered rows that return to the position where the variable is shaded in blue with its unshaded values beneath. |
*ACC/AHA is fully responsible for this content.
Also included are the following additional files: