The need for a Spanish registry of interventional procedures to treat congenital heart disease and standards for center accreditation

Over the last 3 decades, the percutaneous treatment of congenital heart diseases has made significant progress. Currently, it is the therapy of choice to treat many of these diseases like atrioventricular septal defects, pulmonary valve stenosis or coarctation of the aorta. Multiple procedures throughout the life of a patient are required to treat complex heart disease like stenting and, more recently, percutaneous valves, which have become additional alternatives to surgery. Since 1990, cath lab activity is regulated in the registries published by the Interventional Cardiology Association of the Spanish Society of Cardiology (ACI-SEC).1 In the annual publications of these registries there is a small section dedicated to congenital heart disease in the adult population with details on the activity performed, but without an in-depth analysis of the outcomes, complications or mortality. The ACI-SEC and the Spanish Society of Pediatric Cardiology and Congenital Heart Disease Working Group on Hemodynamics have joined forces—for the first time in our country—to conduct a registry of the procedures performed in patients of all ages with congenital heart disease since the fetal stage until the adult age with the collaboration of pediatric and adult cardiologists.2 The Spanish Society of Cardiovascular and Endovascular Surgery has recently published a registry..