Here are the draft copies of the US Pruning and Tree Risk Standards. Lots of good in there, but less comprehensive than the more traditional English and German Standards. Only 35 days left to comment, or forever hold your peace!
http://tcia.org/TCIAPdfs/business/accreditation/A300Part1-Pruning-D3V1-PR.pdf
http://tcia.org/TCIAPdfs/business/accreditation/A300Part9-TreeRisk-D1V1-PR.pdf
Here, an epicormic sprout slows decay. Further down, endocormic sprouts can stop decay.
Just because the latest iteration of 3998 is a million pages Guy it doesn’t make it better than its predecessor!