Whilst there are no defined therapy guidelines specific for each class, once the severity of the angina has been assessed, clinicians can use the framework to aid them in the development of an individual treatment plan.
Limitations of the CCS grading system include the lack of consideration of confounding factors, such as drug therapy before exertion (particularly sublingual nitrates), and personal warm-up.
[7] The CCS grading system for angina is, in part, used to evaluate fitness to fly by the British Cardiovascular Society.
[8] (Note: Class 0 is not an official part of the CCS functional classification of angina pectoris, however it has been mentioned in several sources, referring to myocardial ischemia without symptoms.)
[11] The CCS developed the angina pectoris grading system in 1972; it was based on personal correspondence, information from MEDLINE and international citation indexes searches.
The purpose of defining a scale for the severity of exertional angina was to evaluate the efficacy of medical and surgical therapy by comparing the patient’s status before and after therapeutic interventions.
[13] Chronic angina is often associated with substantial economic burden to the society, both in terms of healthcare expenditure and lost productivity.
In South Asian countries such as India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, one aspect of healthcare expenditure on angina-affected households is out-of-pocket spending on medicine and primary outpatient care.