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Eur J Cardiothorac Surg 2005;28:405-406
© 2005 Elsevier Science NL

Original articles

Editorial comment

Chief, Section of Cardiothoracic Surgery, St Christopher's Hospital for Children, Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA

^* Corresponding author. Tel: +1 215 427 5109; fax +1 215 427 3860. (Email: marshall.jacobs@tenethealth.com).

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

With a history that dates back to the first successful ligation of a patent ductus arteriosus by Dr Robert Gross in 1938, the field of congenital heart surgery has a life history that is stretching into is seventh decade. Yet the appearance of multi-institutional national or multi-national regional registry databases to record and evaluate outcomes from congenital heart surgery was really a phenomenon of the decade of the nineties. And as such, these essential tools for quality assessment and quality improvement are in fact barely beyond their infancy. Unlike adult cardiac surgery for acquired heart disease, the challenge related to data management for congenital heart surgery is of greater magnitude, because the anatomic diagnoses and the palliative and reparative operative procedures number not in the dozens, but in the hundreds. Nonetheless, the international community of congenital hearts surgeons recognized early on the importance of physician-led outcomes analysis in our rapidly developing field. This recognition stemmed not only from altruism and the genuine desire to advance and improve patient care, but also in response to the dramatic and far-reaching consequences of periodic publications in the non-scientific press of non-validated, non-verified, non-stratified and sometimes frankly inaccurate outcome statistics. As stated by Dr William Williams at the 2004 meeting of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, "Outcomes for cardiac surgery are closely scrutinized and expectations are very high. It is timely that we as a profession develop a report card for congenital heart surgery. The report card must . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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