National Myocardial Infarction Registry

The authors delineate the circumstances of the creation of the National Myocardial Infarction Registry program. This web-based program started in January 1, 2010 as a "pilot" study with the voluntary participation of 12 centres. As a result of professional consensus, the number of participating institutions has continuously increased and, since March 1, 2013, data supply has become obligatory for hospitals treating patients with myocardial infarction. In December, 2013 a new modification of certain health and health insurance related acts such as Act XLVII/1997 regulated the operation of National Myocardial Infraction Registry. At present 65 institutions provide data regularly. The number of patients with myocardial infarction in the database was 24308 in January 1, 2014. The authors summarize the data which accumulated during almost four years of functioning of the National Myocardial Infarction Registry Program. The incidence of myocardial infarction was defined by reviewing the number of pre hospital and hospital cases in five districts of the capital and Szabolcs-Szatmar-Bereg County of Hungary. Reviewing the records patients with ST-elevation and non-ST-elevation myocardial infarction revealed that treatment of 91% of ST-elevation patients occurred in hospitals with cardiac catheterization laboratory, and 82% of patients had primary percutaneous coronary intervention. In-hospital, 30-day and 1-year mortality were defined for patients treated for both types of myocardial infarction. Based on national and international experience, the authors emphasize that professional characteristics of patient care can only be assessed using specific patient registries and these data are essential in the development of an efficient health-care system.