BMJ  2004;329:413-414 (21 August), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7463.413

Editorial

Reporting systems for cardiac surgery

Existing systems assure safety but do not indicate quality

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

The outcomes of medical treatment arouse political and public interest around the world. In the United States the departments of health in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania publish cardiac surgical results that are specific to surgeons and hospitals. The New York initiative, which broke new ground, provides robust risk stratified data, and identifies surgeons and hospitals with better or worse outcomes than the state average.¹ However, it lumps all coronary artery bypass graft operations together, uses only mortality as an outcome measure, and takes three years to produce by which time the results are not of much use to patients to make a choice.

Is mortality a good indicator of outcome? Mortality is defined by the Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons in the United Kingdom as death in the hospital where surgery is done, during the same admission.² This excludes deaths in patients who have been discharged to peripheral hospitals . . . [Full text of this article]

Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH16 4SU (zamvarv@hotmail.com)

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This article has been cited by other articles:

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