ISHLT Relaunches Global IMACS Registry to Advance MCS Therapy and Patient Outcomes
Following a five-year hiatus, the world’s only registry of patients with durable mechanical circulatory support (MCS) devices is re-launching and will begin collecting data from institutions around the globe in early 2025.
The International Registry for Mechanically Assisted Circulatory Support (IMACS) registry is operated by the International Society for Health and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT), a global multidisciplinary professional organization dedicated to improving the care of patients with advanced heart and lung disease.
Mechanical circulatory support (MCS) devices are temporarily or permanently implanted in patients with advanced heart failure to keep the heart pumping enough blood. Approximately 4,000 MCS devices are implanted worldwide every year.
The IMACS registry will resume capturing worldwide data related to the outcomes of patients implanted with durable MCS devices designed to last 30 or more days, including ventricular assist devices and total artificial hearts.
“There’s a lot of excitement about the future of MCS devices because transplantation relies on organs, which are very difficult to acquire, and that's not likely to change,” said Daniel Goldstein, MD, Chair of the IMACS
Registry and Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Montefiore Health System in New York. “The scalable impact of MCS devices offers the potential to serve many more heart failure patients, adding years to
their lives and life to their years.”
The IMACS registry operated from 2012 to 2019 but was paused to update data privacy compliance processes with registry partners. The re-launched registry has expanded to include more than 10 additional countries from the Middle East, South America, and the Asia-Pacific region.
As part of the IMACS relaunch, ISHLT and its Foundation will fund research grants to advance outcomes, standards, and best practices in MCS therapy.
The registry will also provide participating collectives with statistical summaries of their enrolled patients for benchmarking against other national and regional data. The first annual report of the IMACS registry to feature the new data will be presented at the ISHLT Annual Meeting in April 2025.
“The ultimate goal of IMACS is to discover what countries can learn from each other and to be able to make regional comparisons in terms of demographics and outcomes and how programs are operationalized,” Dr. Goldstein said.
“Transplantation is not for everybody, and not everyone will be able to get a transplant,” he said. “If we can develop MCS technology that's more economically viable and that produces good quality and quantity of life, that's a win-win for everybody.”
To learn more about the registry and what’s to come, watch this video from IMACS Registry Steering Committee Chair, Daniel Goldstein, MD.
About ISHLT
The International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) is a not-for-profit, multidisciplinary, professional organization dedicated to improving the care of patients with advanced heart or lung disease through transplantation, mechanical support, and innovative therapies via research, education, and advocacy. ISHLT members focus on transplantation and a range of interventions and therapies related to advanced heart and lung disease.