Vice-President launches ‘India Valve Registry’

Vice-President C. P. Radhakrishnan on Saturday (September 4, 2026) launched the “India Valve Registry”, a clinician-led, multicentre, patient-level and longitudinal research platform focused on valve disease and valve interventions.

The registry was launched during “India Valves 2026”, a national conference on valvular and structural heart disease being held in the city from September 4 to 6.

Mr. Radhakrishnan said that advances in cardiovascular medicine over the years have given hope to millions of people. Valvular and structural heart diseases are an important and growing challenge but at the same time, advances in medicine have transformed the manner in which the diseases are treated.

While global evidence is important, he said that India must generate evidence from its own patients and its own clinical experience. According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, the burden of NCDs is high in India. In such a situation, the registry will help in identifying challenges and gaps, learn from experiences and improve patient care, he added.

Health Minister K.G. Arunraj said that Tamil Nadu has come to the launch as a stakeholder. Through the Chief Minister’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme (CMCHIS), the government provides cashless care to about 1.48 crore families at over 2,000 empanelled hospitals.

The Chief Minister announced in the Legislative Assembly that the annual cover under CMCHIS will be enhanced five-fold, from ₹5 lakh to ₹25 lakh per family, placing even advanced cardiac interventions within the reach of the poorest household, he said.

Dr. Arunraj said that through the Tamil Nadu STEMI programme, 18 government medical college hub hospitals with cath labs are networked to 188 peripheral hospitals, so that a patient with heart attack in the remotest taluk receives guideline directed reperfusion free of cost. This hub-and-spoke model was cited internationally as a template for heart attack care in the developing world and is now being strengthened by adding 10 more hub hospitals to this network, he said.

Citing CMCHIS data on valve care, he said that in the last 20 months, 2,590 patients received heart valve replacement surgery — mechanical valves and bioprosthetic valves — at 110 empanelled government and private hospitals. This is roughly four heart valves replaced every single day of the year.

He said that the government paid over ₹34 crore. The youngest patient was a four-year-old child and the oldest, a 83-year-old person. He added that a majority of these patients — 53% — were women. Nearly four out of every five bioprosthetic valves implanted were manufactured in India.

“But the same data humbles us: nearly half of these case sheets still carry the diagnosis of rheumatic heart disease and one in four of these patients was below 40 years of age,” he said.

The Minister said that the State government will stand with this registry in three ways, including encouraging every empanelled hospital performing valve interventions to enrol its cases in the registry and using the evidence generated by the registry to refine its treatment packages, empanelment standards and follow-up care.

G. Sengottuvelu, Course Director and Interventional Cardiologist, Apollo Hospitals, said the registry was a dedicated comprehensive patient-level registry focussing on valve diseases and valve interventions. It is intended to capture the patient’s clinical profile and severity of valve disease, imaging and anatomical findings, treatment selection and procedural planning, devices and techniques used, immediate procedural results and complications, discharge outcomes, rehospitalisation, functional recovery and survival during follow-up.