The Danish Pacemaker and ICD Register: Review of Clinical and Research Potential

The Danish Pacemaker and ICD Register (DPIR) was established in 1982 as a hardware registry and clinical quality database dedicated to cardiac implantable electronic device (CIED) therapy. It is among the most comprehensive and longest-running CIED registries in the world and has recorded over 200,000 CIED procedures in more than 133,000 individuals. Leveraging the Danish registry infrastructure, individual-level linkage to other national clinical and administrative registries via the unique personal identification number greatly expands its research potential. This review summarizes the development, database structure, variable content and quality, and the clinical and scientific impact of DPIR. Examples of data quality include complete national coverage of all CIED procedures, standardized data-entry fields that minimize variability across centers, mandatory reporting of core variables, and high concordance between registry entries and source documentation. Data from DPIR has informed clinical practice guidelines and supported clinical quality improvement in Denmark and internationally.