Daily cardiac catheterization procedural volume and complications at an academic medical center

Cardiac catheterization (CC) is a common procedure with more than a million performed annually in the United States (1). Prior studies have demonstrated an inverse relationship between annual CC procedure volume and the rate of complications. Higher volumes are associated with lower complication rates (2,3). Four hundred CCs a year has been suggested as a goal to define high volume centers (4,5). Facilities and physicians with high CC volumes consistently experience low rates of complications including bleeding, need for CABG and mortality (3,6-8). Daily volumes have not been analyzed and little is known about the effect of procedural volume on outcomes when trainees participate in CC