National Audit of Cardiac Rhythm Management Devices April 2015 – March 2016
This audit is commissioned and managed by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) as part of the National Clinical Audit and Patients Outcomes Programme (NCAPOP) and covers the period 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2016. The audit is held by the National Institute for Cardiac Outcomes Research and led clinically by the British Heart Rhythm Society.
Key findings from the report are as follows:
- Although pacemaker and defibrillator implant rates in the UK are gradually increasing, they remain consistently low in Western Europe.
- There is great variation within the UK in the rates of all types of implants.
- The UK is one of the top countries in Europe performing cardiac resynchronization therapy – a technique that improves the coordination of the heart in patients with heart failure.
- A significant number of UK hospitals continue to perform small numbers of pacemaker and defibrillator implants. For pacemakers, the number of such hospitals has halved in the last year, but for more complex devices, almost 50% of hospitals do not meet recommended minima.
- The full report is available to download from this page
