Interventional cardiology in Poland in the year 2011. Summary report of the Association of Cardiovascular Interventions of the Polish Cardiac Society

Once again in the pages of Progress in Interventional Cardiology we publish a summary of the achievements of Polish interventional cardiology. Data for the year 2011 were collected from the database of the Association of Cardiovascular Interventions of the Polish Cardiac Society (AISN PTK) and annual summary reports from all of the catheterization laboratories in Poland. The dynamic development of percutaneous interventional procedures, but also problems with contracting and the valuation of interventional procedures in the past year, are reflected in the numbers of individual procedures.

An upward trend regarding the number of interventional cardiology procedures observed for many years has been sustained in 2011. This applies to both diagnostic procedures (coronary angiography) and therapeutic – percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs). This was mainly related to the opening of new catheterization laboratories, whose number increased to 137 (an increase of 13 cathe­terization laboratories during one year).

This figure indicates that currently there are 3.6 interventional cardiology centers for one million inhabitants or in other words that there is one center per approximately 280 thousand inhabitants. Importantly, most of them (114, 83%) operate in 24 h hemodynamic shifts admitting patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS). Most catheterization laboratories regularly sent reports on their activities to the AISN PTK database (96% of the cath labs) and all cath labs provided a summary report for the previous year.

A total of 88 laboratories are accredited: 15 laboratories have accreditation class A, 51 class B, and 22 cath labs have the highest class C accreditation. Unfortunately, we must once again state that 36% of laboratories operate without accreditation of the Polish Cardiac Society, which is an important element of quality and safety control for patients treated with percutaneous interventions in Poland. The number of invasive cardiology centers per 1 million inhabitants in different provinces is presented in Figure 1. There is still inhomogeneity regarding the saturation of different provinces with catheterization laboratories: there are a little more than 2 centers per 1 million inhabitants in the Zachodniopomorskie province, while in the Świętokrzyskie province there are more than 5 centers per

1 million inhabitants.

There are currently 705 physicians performing...


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