The Danish Heart Registry

AIM: The Danish Heart Registry (DHR) seeks to monitor nationwide activity and quality of invasive diagnostic and treatment strategies in patients with ischemic heart disease as well as valvular heart disease and to provide data for research. STUDY POPULATION: All adult (≥15 years) patients undergoing coronary angiography (CAG), percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), coronary artery bypass grafting, and heart valve surgery performed across all Danish hospitals were included. MAIN VARIABLES: The DHR contains a subset of the data stored in the Eastern and Western Denmark Heart Registries (EDHR and WDHR). For each type of procedure, up to 70 variables are registered in the DHR. Since 2010, the data quality protocol encompasses fulfillment of web-based validation rules of daily-submitted records and yearly approval of the data by the EDHR and WDHR. DESCRIPTIVE DATA: The data collection on procedure has been complete for PCI and surgery since 2000, and for CAG as of 2006. From 2000 to 2014, the number of CAG, PCI, and surgical procedures changed by 231%, 193%, and 99%, respectively. Until the end of 2014, a total of 357,476 CAG, 131,309 PCI, and 60,831 surgical procedures had been performed, corresponding to 249,445, 100,609, and 55,539 first-time patients, respectively. The DHR generally has a high level of completeness (1–missing) of each procedure (>90%) when compared to the National Patient Registry. Variables important for assessing the quality of care have a high level of completeness for surgery since 2000, and for CAG and PCI since 2010. CONCLUSION: The DHR contains valuable data on cardiac invasive procedures, which makes it an important national monitoring and quality system and at the same time serves as a platform for research projects in the cardiovascular field

The impact of avoiding cardiopulmonary by-pass during coronary artery bypass surgery in elderly patients: the Danish On-pump Off-pump Randomisation Study (DOORS)

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Coronary Artery Bypass Graft operation for ischemic heart disease provides improved quality of life and, in some patients, prolonged survival. Concern has, however, been raised about complications that may be related to the use of cardiopulmonary by-pass (CPB) and aortic cross-clamping. It has been hypothesized that when coronary artery by-pass grafting is performed without the use of CPB, the rate of serious complications is reduced.</p> <p>Methods/Design</p> <p>The trial is designed as an open, randomized, controlled, clinical trial with blinded assessment of end-points. Patients at or above 70 years of age, referred for surgical myocardial revascularisation, are included and randomised to receive coronary artery by-pass grafting either with or without the use of CPB and aortic cross-clamping. Follow-up is performed by clinical, biochemical, electrocardiographic, and angiographic data that are evaluated by independent committees that are blinded with respect to the result of the randomisation. End points include mortality, stroke, myocardial infarction, graft patency, quality of life, and cost-effectiveness. The trial is performed in four different Danish, cardiac surgery centres.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00123981</p