Public report national audit of percutaneous coronary interventional procedures 2011

More PCI centers are treating more heart attack patients faster, national audit finds

2013-01-29

(Press-News.org) The 2011 annual report of the National Audit of Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) highlights the significant progress within hospitals to expand PCI services to treat more patients with acute coronary syndromes.

PCI mechanically improves blood flow to the heart and can be used to relieve the symptoms of angina, prevent and treat heart attacks. When used to treat heart attack patients, the procedure is called primary PCI. Commissioned and funded by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership, the National Audit of PCI is clinically led by the British Cardiovascular Intervention Society and managed by the National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research.

Key findings include:

There has been a year on year increase in the number of PCIs performed in the UK over the last decade. In 2002, 44,913 PCI procedures were performed compared to over 88,000 performed in 2011. This has been achieved by an expansion of both the number of PCI centres and activity within existing centres.

Primary PCI is now the preferred treatment for heart attack patients instead of traditional 'clot busting' drugs. The percentage of patients receiving primary PCI has more than doubled since 2006.

There has been a year on year improvement in treating patients within target times. In 2011 80% of all patients were treated within 150 minutes of calling for professional help and 92% treated within 90 minutes of arriving at the PCI centre. This compares very favourably with international data.

Patients who need to be transferred between hospitals for primary PCI had longer delays to treatment than patients admitted directly to a PCI centre. Transfers delayed treatment by about 50 minutes.

There has been a continued increase in the use of the radial artery instead of the femoral for access, and this may be one of the factors responsible for driving down complication rates.

Whilst overall access to PCI and primary PCI has improved there remain large differences between the countries of the United Kingdom.

For overall PCI rates per million population, Wales has the lowest rates at 1170 pmp and Northern Ireland the highest (1751 pmp). The PCI activity for England is 1395 pmp. For primary PCI England had the highest rates at 362 pmp and N Ireland the lowest (158 pmp). The differences between cardiac networks and countries are shown in the graphic.

The report collected data on 88,692 PCI procedures from 97 NHS PCI centres and 7 private hospitals between January and December 2011.

Peter Ludman, Consultant Cardiologist and Clinical Lead of the national audit said: "One of the key steps to maintaining and improving high quality treatment is measuring what you are doing. It is a great tribute to all PCI centres in the UK that they are dedicated to providing detailed information about the procedures they carry out, so that the information can be collated and analysed at a National level. These data provide considerable insight into the practice of PCI, showing not only how practice is evolving over the years, but also how different units compare with each other and how the UK compares with other countries".

Professor Huon Gray, Interim National Clinical Director for Heart Disease, Department of Health England said: "I congratulate all those who have worked so hard to collect these excellent data, and particularly pay tribute to the expert work of Dr Peter Ludman in producing such comprehensive analyses each year. The information this report generates is invaluable to all those involved in planning, managing and delivering PCI services."

The full report will be published on the NICOR website on Tuesday 29th January 2013.

INFORMATION:

Contact details: For further information or to arrange interviews with spokespersons please contact Tracy Whittaker for more information.

Notes to Editors:

The National Audit of Percutaneous Coronary Interventional Procedures is clinically led by the British Cardiovascular Intervention Society and managed by NICOR (National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research). It is commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) and is run by the National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research (NICOR), part of the National Centre for Cardiovascular disease Prevention and Outcomes within the UCL Institute of Cardiovascular Science. More information can be found at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/nicor/ and http://www.bsh.org.uk/.

The Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) is led by a consortium of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, the Royal College of Nursing and National Voices. Its aim is to promote quality improvement, and in particular to increase the impact that clinical audit has on healthcare quality in England and Wales. HQIP hosts the contract to manage and develop the National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme (NCAPOP). Their purpose is to engage clinicians across England and Wales in systematic evaluation of their clinical practice against standards and to support and encourage improvement in the quality of treatment and care. The programme comprises more than 30 clinical audits that cover care provided to people with a wide range of medical, surgical and mental health conditions. More information can be found at http://www.hqip.org.uk/.

About UCL (University College London)

Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. We are among the world's top universities, as reflected by our performance in a range of international rankings and tables. According to the Thomson Scientific Citation Index, UCL is the second most highly cited European university and the 15th most highly cited in the world. UCL has nearly 25,000 students from 150 countries and more than 9,000 employees, of whom one third are from outside the UK. The university is based in Bloomsbury in the heart of London, but also has two international campuses – UCL Australia and UCL Qatar. Our annual income is more than £800 million.

www.ucl.ac.uk | Follow us on Twitter @uclnews | Watch our YouTube channel YouTube.com/UCLTV

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Public report national audit of percutaneous coronary interventional procedures 2011

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