UCLA Nursing researcher part of international team defining what constitutes a heart attack
The fifth universal definition of myocardial infarction (5th UDMI) has been published by a group of cardiovascular experts from the American Heart Association (AHA), European Society of Cardiology, the American College of Cardiology, and the World Heart Federation.
UCLA Joe C. Wen School of Nursing Professor Emerita Holli DeVon, representing AHA, is among the paper’s authors and the team’s only nurse researcher.
The UDMI is an internationally recognized medical framework used to diagnose and classify heart attacks, clinically called myocardial infarctions. This latest revision comes eight years after the last update and represents a significant change in how heart attacks are diagnosed.
The fifth UDMI now classifies heart attacks into three clinical types – primary, secondary, and procedure-related – replacing the previous numerical based types. Experts say this classification method better addresses underlying pathophysiology, aligns more closely with clinical evaluations, and incorporates objective diagnostic criteria.
The paper has been published in four high impact research journals, including the European Heart Journal, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Circulation, and Global Heart and was written by a global multidisciplinary group of experts from 12 countries around the world.
Dr. DeVon, the only nurse on the international team, is a world-renowned expert on cardiovascular disease with a body of research focused on the identification and management of the symptoms of acute coronary syndromes and chronic ischemic heart disease. She is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the American Heart Association, has served as a Board Member on the National Clinician Scholars Programs, and is a member of the American Heart Association’s Scientific Publishing Committee.
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