History of the Commission for Clinical Cardiology of the German Cardiac Society. More than 30 years of publication of clinical practice guidelines

The German Cardiac Society was founded in 1927 by Bruno Kisch and Arthur Weber. At that time the Society was dominated by members working in more theoretical areas of heart and circulation research (e.g. physiology, pathology and pharmacology). In 1971 the Commission for Clinical Cardiology was initiated by members of the Society working in clinical fields in order to prevent the founding of a new clinical society. It was the time when new technical methods in clinical cardiology were being introduced and more institutions with heart catheterization laboratories were founded. In 1983 the first clinical practice guidelines were published, just before the American College of Cardiolo- gy/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) guidelines. Today the clinical practice guidelines are evaluated in cooperation with the European Society of Cardiology. Since 1996 all guidelines have been published on the internet site of the German Cardiac Society. In 1982 the first of now 25 (2010) reports on the structure and number of the catheter laboratories and the number of procedures in Germany (Heart Report) were published.