The foundation and launch of the Melbourne Interventional Group: a collaborative interventional cardiology project.

The Melbourne Interventional Group (MIG) is a voluntary collaborative venture of interventional cardiologists practicing at 12 major public and private hospitals in Victoria, designed to record data pertaining to percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) and perform long-term follow-up. The potential advantages of collaboration involve large-scale analysis of current interventional strategies (e.g. drug-eluting stents, evaluation of new technologies and cost-effective analysis), provide a basis for multi-centred clinical trials and allow comparison of clinical outcomes with cardiac surgery. The established registry documents demographic, clinical and procedural characteristics of consecutive patients undergoing PCI and permits analysis of those characteristics at 30 days and 12 months. The registry is co-ordinated by the Centre of Clinical Research Excellence (CCRE), a research body within the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine (Monash University, Melbourne). The eventual goal of MIG is to provide a contemporary appraisal of Australian interventional cardiology practice, with opportunities to improve in-hospital and long-term outcomes of patients with coronary artery disease.