The American Heart Association Gives Heart Disease Its Own Society

Cardiology is the clinical study and treatment of the heart and its diseases, using electrocardiography, imaging and controlled clinical study to diagnose cardiac function rather than relying on symptom description alone. The specialty gained its first major professional body in the United States in 1924, when a small group of physicians founded the American Heart Association, at a time when electrocardiography was still new and heart disease was only beginning to be treated as a distinct medical specialty with its own diagnostic instruments rather than a general symptom of failing health noted alongside everything else a patient reported.

Reports of miraculous healing frequently involve a claimed cardiac condition, a stopped heart restarted, a diagnosed heart failure reversed, and cardiology is the discipline that can independently evaluate what medical evidence, if any, documents the condition before and after the claimed event, using the same electrocardiographic and imaging record a hospital would keep for any other patient. The atlas relies on cardiological standards of diagnosis wherever a religious healing claim specifically concerns the heart, distinguishing a case with a documented prior diagnosis and verified recovery from one resting on report alone.