Grant: CIHR New Investigator

Heart disease continues to be the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Canada. Recently, treatment of heart disease patients has increasingly relied upon minimally invasive procedures such as Percutaneous Coronary Intervention, commonly known as angioplasty. Angioplasty is a procedure that can unblock a coronary artery without the use of open-heart surgery. Most angioplasty procedures involve using a balloon catheter and a stent to push the blockage against the arterial wall and thereby reducing the narrowing of the artery. In the past decade, the number of angioplasty procedures has more than doubled in Canada. In fact, angioplasty has surpassed bypass surgery as the most common procedure to treat heart disease patients. Although angioplasty is very popular, there is evidence to suggest that angioplasty is not being used optimally across Canada. For example, we do not know whether patients are getting good or bad angioplasty, or whether angioplasty is being overused, underused or misused. Our ambitious goal is to set national standards to understand and measure the quality of care and outcomes of angioplasty across Canada. We will call on experts across Canada to develop new Canadian angioplasty standards. They will be asked to rate different aspects of angioplasty as unimportant, fairly important, and very important. In this way, a standard of what is a good angioplasty will be developed. We will then look at whether these standards are being met in patient across Canada who receives angioplasty. This kind of initiative on angioplasty has never been done in Canada. The standard we develop can be applied to every angioplasty patient in Canada. It will serve to ensure angioplasty procedures are being used in the most appropriate and effective manner. Our ultimate goal is to see outcome improvement among all patients receiving angioplasty in Canada.