The Italian registry of therapeutic apheresis in SISTRA: Year of activity 2023

The Italian Registry of Therapeutic Apheresis (IRTA) collects clinical data on patients undergoing therapeutic apheresis procedures throughout the national territory, with the main objective of improving the quality and safety of the care provided to the patient. Given the importance of centralizing the collection and analysis of information on therapeutic apheresis, the National Blood Center (NBC), at the request of the Italian Scientific Society of Hemapheresis and Cellular Manipulation (SIdEM), has included IRTA in the Information System of Transfusion Services (SISTRA), which is the information system of the Ministry of Health for the exchange of data on blood and its derivatives between the Italian Regions and the NBC. This manuscript reports IRTA activity data for 2023 maintaining the general approach introduced in previous manuscripts to facilitate comparison with already published activity data (2020-2022). For each therapeutic apheresis procedure (more than 15) we reported the number of procedures, the number of patients treated, and adverse effects. Furthermore, for each pathology belonging to more than 8 specialized clinical areas we reported the number of procedures, the number of patients treated, the number of patients at first diagnosis and the outcome of the patients. More than 36000 procedures in more than 8500 patients were included in the 2023 database. The aim of the IRTA 2023 activity data is to provide an updated snapshot of the use of therapeutic apheresis in the treatment of human diseases in Italy and a strategic resource for institutions and scientific societies.