Many patients with a heart disease need cardiovascular, cardiothoracic or catheter based procedures, for example to cure the complications of ischemic heart disease, to correct congenital heart disease, or to treat valvular heart disease. Cardiac surgery comprises a wide range of life-saving operations on the heart or great vessels, such as coronary artery bypass grafting or heart transplantation. Interventional cardiology deals specifically with the catheter based treatment of heart diseases, including the diagnosis and treatment of coronary artery disease, vascular disease and structural heart disease.
The National Heart Registry (NHR; in Dutch: Nederlandse Hart Registratie) collects data on all cardiac interventions performed in the Netherlands. Each year, approximately 75.000 interventions are recorded in the NHR. The Registry follows patients with a heart disease through all stages of the treatment process: from the moment of diagnosis up to many years after the intervention. Operational and technical management of the NHR is carried out by the department of Medical Informatics; it facilitates a range of services such as receipt, storage and dissemination of data in various forms. It is NHR's mission to serve the heart patient's interest by monitoring and improving the quality of cardiology care in the Netherlands from an integrated, high-quality and innovative approach.
More information on the NHR registry (in Dutch) can be found here.