The Danish Heart Registry.
OBJECTIVE
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.


METHODS
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.


METHODS
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.
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.


CONCLUSIONS
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 National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Copenhagen K, Denmark; Department of Cardiology, Copenhagen University Hospital Gentofte, Hellerup, Denmark.
Cengiz
C
Özcan
The National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Copenhagen K, Denmark.
Knud
K
Juel
Department of Cardiology, The Heart Center, Copenhagen University Hospital Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen Ø, Denmark.
Jens
J
Flensted Lassen
The National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Copenhagen K, Denmark.
Lene Mia
LM
von Kappelgaard
Department of Thoracic Surgery, Odense University Hospital, Odense C, Denmark.
Poul Erik
PE
Mortensen
The National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Copenhagen K, Denmark; Department of Cardiology, Copenhagen University Hospital Gentofte, Hellerup, Denmark.
Gunnar
G
Gislason
cardiac surgery; coronary angiography; nationwide; percutaneous coronary intervention