National Cardiac Audit Programme 2022 Report: The heart in lockdown

The National Cardiac Audit Programme (NCAP) has published its 2022 annual report. Based on data from 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021, the report focuses on how cardiovascular services were impacted by the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. NCAP comprises of six domains, each of which is concerned with a particular cardiovascular disease area or treatment (for which individual reports can also be found using these links):

• The National Congenital Heart Disease Audit (NCHDA)
• The Myocardial Ischaemia National Audit Project (MINAP)
• The National Audit of Percutaneous Coronary Interventions (NAPCI)
• The National Adult Cardiac Surgery Audit (NACSA)
• The National Heart Failure Audit (NHFA)
• The National Audit of Cardiac Rhythm Management (NACRM)

This annual report found that overall acute admissions were down during 2020/21, with a 9% reduction in those with STEMI, 18% fall in those with NSTEMI and a 12% fall in admissions for heart failure. Other key findings include:

• Antenatal detection of congenital heart defects requiring intervention in the first year improved to 52%
• More STEMI patients were investigated by echocardiography – now 77%
• There was increased referral of heart attack patients to cardiac rehabilitation – exceeded the 85% target at the end of 2020/21
• The mortality for most cardiac interventions remained unchanged (for example, all PCI 2%, PPCI 5.5%, and NSTEMI PCI 0.75%).

The report also found that there were substantial drops in acute cardiovascular admissions during the first wave of COVID-19 hospitalisations and, while the reductions in the second COVID-19 wave were significant, they were smaller for all procedures except for PPCI. Read the full report: You can read the report by clicking on the link below. Stay-up-to-date: For notifications of future reports from HQIP, sign up to our mailing list.