Artificial intelligence can detect hidden signs of cardiovascular disease from a wide range of medical images, including electrocardiograms, chest X-rays, mammograms and even simple photographs of a person's face, according to research presented at the ESC Congress 2026, the European Society of Cardiology's pan-European conference, held in Munich from 28 to 31 August.
Athanasios Trikas, associate professor of cardiology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, coordinating director of the cardiology clinic at Evangelismos Hospital in Athens, and secretary general of the Hellenic Cardiological Society, took an active part in the congress, chairing sessions on artificial intelligence and heart failure. Evangelismos is one of Greece's largest public hospitals.
Speaking afterwards to Greece's Fm Agency and to Tania Mantouvalou's radio programme "104.9 Health Secrets," Trikas said artificial intelligence could now combine different parameters, from imaging tests and cardiograms to other available data, to identify people who may go on to develop cardiovascular disease in the future.
On heart failure specifically, he said the biggest challenge in the field was predicting the disease before symptoms appear. He said AI could become a particularly powerful tool in doctors' hands for that purpose, but stressed that it would not replace them.
New guidelines reclassify heart failure
Trikas said heart failure was an extremely serious syndrome for every society and every health budget, and that the clinical guidelines issued every four years bring important new evidence for treating it.
He said three new sets of guidelines were unveiled at this year's congress: one on heart failure, one on cardiac rehabilitation, and one on managing patients who also have chronic kidney disease.
The heart failure guidelines change how the condition is classified. Instead of three separate categories, there are now two: patients with damage to the heart's systolic function, the pumping phase of the heartbeat, and those with damage to its diastolic function, the filling phase. Trikas said this gives doctors more room to manoeuvre, particularly for patients with heart failure and preserved ejection fraction, letting them focus more on treating related conditions such as high blood pressure, arrhythmias, kidney disease and atrial fibrillation.
Prevention and new drug options
Trikas said the congress placed heavy emphasis on prevention in heart failure patients, meaning early treatment of all the causes that lead to the syndrome. He said that once a patient reaches the point of showing symptoms, they will, within the following decade, progress to end-stage heart failure with problems that are difficult to resolve, unless a significant intervention takes place.
He said tackling risk factors, including smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes, dyslipidaemia and excess body weight, remains central to treating heart failure.
Trikas also pointed to new treatment data, saying the congress presented results for a new drug option for heart failure that were judged particularly encouraging for expanding the range of available therapies. He added that structured exercise, patient education and active patient involvement in treatment remain just as important as new drugs and new technology.
Closer ties between cardiologists and nephrologists
For the first time, Trikas said, the new guidelines treat the heart and kidneys so emphatically as a single system. He explained that even when a patient has heart disease but normal kidney function, or kidney disease but normal heart function, both functions now need to be monitored over time and in parallel.
As a result, he said, cooperation between cardiologists and nephrologists is becoming closer, with tests adjusted so that heart and kidney function are checked together rather than separately.
Trikas said the message from Munich was clear: cardiology is entering an era in which prevention, personalised treatment, artificial intelligence and closer cooperation between different medical specialties can substantially change the course of patients' disease.
