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Editorial

Clinical databases – a double-edged sword!

Department of Cardio-Vascular Surgery, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, CHUV, Rue du Bugnon 46, 1011 Lausanne, Switzerland

^_* Corresponding author. Tel.: +41 21 314 22 79; fax: +41 21 314 28 79. (Email: Ludwig.von-segesser@chuv.ch). (URL: http://www.cardiovasc.net).

Key Words: Coronary artery disease • Aortic valve stenose • Traumatic aortic rupture • Thoracic surgery • Database • Surgeons performance

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

To make progress it is absolutely necessary to know what we do in order to define when and how to do it best. This is not specific to our fields of interest, i.e. thoracic, cardiac, and vascular surgery, but much more a general issue. As a matter of fact, it is of prime importance to document the status quo, prior to any change, so that the improvement looked for can be assessed, and compared in its proper context. Monitoring our activities also allows for detecting changes in recruitment, severity of disease, the burden of risk factors, the early operative results, the resources used, and the long-term outcome.

For an individual surgeon, it is not sufficient to know his own results. He has to be able to compare them to the results of his group, to the results of other groups in his area, to the results in other countries, and to the results of competing techniques. The latter is a very important issue and can easily be demonstrated, at least for the short term. Even if . . . [Full Text of this Article]