Cardiac surgical services in Bristol are now of high quality

BMJ 1998;316:1986 ( 27 June )

Letters

Cardiac surgical services in Bristol are now of high quality

News p 1924

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ The unfortunate events relating to the General Medical Council's recent inquiry into paediatric cardiac surgery performedat Bristol Royal Infirmary have been widely reported, both inthe medical press and in the public media. ¹ ² Clearly inthe past there was a major problem with this particular aspectof the service. The clinicians who now provide both the paediatricand adult cardiac service in Bristol support the efforts of theGeneral Medical Council and any future public inquiry to resolvethe matter fully.

In the mass of reporting, which was often written in a highly emotive style, it is easy to overlook the fact that the lastof the events in question occurred some three years ago and theearliest occurred many years before that. Like many other centres,Bristol has been developing an audit programme in recent years,and we currently have a sophisticated audit system in the . . . [Full text of this article]