The first British Cardiovascular Intervention Society supplement toHeart published in 1997 surveyed the then state of the art and looked into the future, speculating on the value of emerging technologies. In 1999, the BCIS supplement takes stock of present practice and, in the emerging era of clinical governance, it examines the processes by which we assess our results.

Since BCIS evolved from its predecessor, the British Angioplasty Group, we have attempted to collect data from all active interventional centres, related to the number of procedures as well as outcomes. These results used to be published intermittently inHeart. Because the process was voluntary, the information was incomplete …