Skip to main content

UCSF Health Joins Registry to Improve Cardiogenic Shock Treatment

UC San Francisco’s Heart and Vascular Center has been recognized by The American Heart Association (AHA) for its participation in a new Cardiogenic Shock Registry. The purpose of the registry is to improve the quality of care and to better understand the clinical symptoms of shock types, treatment patterns and outcomes.

Cardiogenic shock — a life threatening condition when a person’s heart can’t pump enough blood to meet the needs of the body — is most often caused by serious heart attack or advanced heart failure. Historically, data related to cardiogenic shock has been limited, inconsistent and challenging to interpret.

“While other heart and vascular conditions have seen improvement in mortality rates in recent years, cardiogenic shock mortality rates still remain unacceptably high on a national level - in the 40-50 percent range,” said Connor O’Brien, MD, cardiologist, critical care specialist and UCSF assistant professor of Medicine. “Improving the outcomes for patients with cardiogenic shock is why UCSF decided to become an early participant in this project. No center can do this alone and solving this requires a multicenter approach with access to vast amounts of data.”

 As the only California participant program in the Cardiogenic Shock Registry, UCSF has access to a robust web-based tool for tracking all patients hospitalized with cardiogenic shock. Powered by Get With The Guidelines®, the American Heart Association’s Cardiogenic Shock Registry gathers real-time data from acute care hospitals across the nation to provide a foundation for improving the quality and consistency of care in patients in U.S. hospitals with cardiogenic shock symptoms. The tool features on-demand reporting and dashboards for responsive quality improvement.

The Cardiogenic Shock Registry builds on more than 20 years of quality improvement and registry experience and will help inform the larger medical community on how to best treat cardiogenic shock.

“We are pleased to recognize the leaders and teams at UCSF for their strong commitment to caring for people with cardiogenic shock,” said David A. Morrow, MD, MPH, FAHA, FACC, co-chair of the Association’s Cardiogenic Shock Registry steering committee. “The data gathered by this registry is instrumental to improving the science community’s understanding of best practices for the treatment of patients with cardiogenic shock.”

National-level aggregated, de-identified data will be available to researchers through the Association’s Precision Medicine Platform, a secure cloud-computing platform to facilitate the research. The Precision Medicine Platform, powered by Amazon Web Services, is a central hub for the cardiovascular and stroke research community to access vast and diverse datasets and cloud-based workspaces that enable state-of-the-art, high-performance computing, analytics and collaboration to accelerate scientific discovery.

“We are excited to join this scientific research community to provide high-quality evidence and promote best practices for the treatment of patients with cardiogenic shock,” said Christopher Barnett, MD, MPH, cardiologist, critical care specialist and UCSF Professor of Medicine. “The suite of resources available through participation in the Cardiogenic Shock Registry will help our team improve the acute care continuum for cardiogenic shock patients.”

About the American Heart Association

The American Heart Association is a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives. We are dedicated to ensuring equitable health in all communities. Through collaboration with numerous organizations, and powered by millions of volunteers, we fund innovative research, advocate for the public’s health and share lifesaving resources. The Dallas-based organization has been a leading source of health information for nearly a century. Connect with us on heart.orgFacebookTwitter or by calling 1-800-AHA-USA1.

About UCSF Health: UCSF Health is recognized worldwide for its innovative patient care, reflecting the latest medical knowledge, advanced technologies and pioneering research. It includes the flagship UCSF Medical Center, which is ranked among the top 10 hospitals nationwide, as well as UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals, with campuses in San Francisco and Oakland, Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital and Clinics, UCSF Benioff Children’s Physicians and the UCSF Faculty Practice. These hospitals serve as the academic medical center of the University of California, San Francisco, which is world-renowned for its graduate-level health sciences education and biomedical research. UCSF Health has affiliations with hospitals and health organizations throughout the Bay Area. Visit https://ucsfhealth.org. Follow UCSF Health on Facebook or on Twitter.