European Society of Cardiology

New Capabilities

Hosted the congress where results were presented

An AI tool built at Imperial College London reads heart failure and heart valve disease from a standard electrocardiogram (ECG), a test in clinical use for a century. In a 67,000-patient US trial, it flagged up to 81 percent of heart failure cases and 90 percent of valve disease cases. Each read takes under two seconds.

Updated Sep 28

Rule Changes

Co-developer of the Fifth Universal Definition; host of ESC Congress 2026

For decades, the blood test for heart attacks used a single threshold for every patient. That threshold caught nearly all men having heart attacks but missed some women, because women naturally carry lower levels of the heart-injury protein troponin. The world's four leading cardiovascular organizations just agreed on the first universal definition of a heart attack, and it corrects that bias.

Updated Sep 10

Rule Changes

Issued first joint CVD-CKD guidelines

In European medicine, the heart and kidney have been treated as separate problems. The first-ever joint guidelines from the European Society of Cardiology and the European Renal Association now treat them as one system that damages itself in a two-way cycle: kidney disease accelerates heart disease, and heart disease accelerates kidney failure.

Updated Sep 7