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The standing guideline writing committee along with the parent Task Force identified trials and other key data through October 2011 that may impact guideline recommendations. On the basis of the criteria/considerations noted in the Preamble and the approval of new oral antiplatelets, a focused update was initiated to provide guidance on how to incorporate these agents into daily practice. Now that multiple agents are available, a comparison of their use in various settings within clinical practice is provided. This iteration replaces the sections in the 2007 ACC/AHA Guidelines for the Management of Patients With Unstable Angina/Non–ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction4 that were updated by the 2011 ACCF/AHA Focused Update of the Guidelines for the Management of Patients With Unstable Angina/Non–ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction.

To provide clinicians with a comprehensive set of data, whenever deemed appropriate or when published, the absolute risk difference and number needed to treat or harm are provided in the guideline, along with confidence intervals (CI) and data related to the relative treatment effects such as odds ratio (OR), relative risk (RR), hazard ratio (HR), and incidence rate ratio.

Consult the full-text version of the 2007 ACC/AHA Guidelines for the Management of Patients With Unstable Angina/Non–ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction4 for policy on clinical areas not covered by the current document. Individual recommendations updated in this focused update will be incorporated into future revisions and/or updates of the full-text guidelines.