The first multicenter coronary stenting registration in Taiwan

Purpose. To evaluate the efficacy of clinical application in coronary stent deployment and its complications in Taiwan. Background. The coronary stent is designed to improve the safety of coronary interventional procedure for critical coronary stenosis, smoothing the adverse effect of coronary dissection or thrombosis and reducing the incidence of emergency bypass graft and its associated mortality rate in intervention. This device is widely used all over the world. It was introduced into Taiwan in 1995. The multicenter stent registration started from the beginning of clinical application in Taiwan will be helpful for all of our cardiologist to share experience together. Methods and Results. The Interventional Committee of Republic of China Society of Cardiology started a program to register all coronary stenting since May 1995. It aims to gather all hospitals and interventionists to together put forth basic data on coronary stenting. There were 42 coronary interventionists at ten hospitals willingly joined in the registry 1995, reporting 219 cases and 285 stents deployed. The situation was much improved a year later. There were 15 hospitals, 77 interventionists, 1,109 cases and 1,414 stents deployed in 1996. The complication rate related to the procedure decreased as experience increased. Conclusions. Coronary stenting as a form of interventional therapy has been utilized in Taiwan since 1995. The first multicenter registration in years 1995 and 1996 provides evidence that this interventional therapy has been successfully established in our country.